Chaos Takes Hold (A 2p! Hetalia Story)
by silverstone98
Summary: The second-players are desperate. They try over and over to kill their first-player counterparts, but each attempt results in failure. Now they must reach out to a human for help. The infamous assassin known as Lady Specter is notorious for taking out important politicians in a crowd in broad daylight. The second-players could use her to take out the first-players for them, right?
1. Those Who Thrive on Chaos

Chapter One: Those Who Thrive on Chaos

Confusion and fear spread throughout the crowd like wildfire amongst trees. The story of a tragedy passed from eye to mouth to ear at an alarming speed. It was almost unbelievable to hear, but it must have been true if everyone was in such a panic. And so, it seemed the whole stadium of people swelled towards the doors to try to escape the madness.

The day wasn't supposed to be this way. For all these people—some hundred thousand of them packed into this stadium—today was supposed to be a little event to attend with family on a lazy Saturday afternoon to watch a man encourage them about things they had no control over. It wasn't supposed to be a chance to experience murder.

The people in the front who were closest to the speaker but farthest from any exit freaked out after having to shower in the blood and brains of the orator. Any normal person would. But they stood in shock for a few moments, in either disgust or surprise, before the sense of danger slapped them in the face.

Around them, the rest of the stunned crowd felt the rise of malice a lot sooner. Men grabbed their wives and mothers grabbed their children, and they all pushed through the crowd to try to get their loved ones away from the horrific sight as fast as they could. There was a lot of pushing and shoving and screaming, and the bodies became so packed together by the exit doors that one wouldn't be able to tell where one's own body parts were in the sea of others.

Emergency medics had gathered around the remains of the speaker, hoping to find someone they could save. But the lifeless man laying on the stage in a pull of blood was a hopeless case, and there was nothing they could do to save him.

Some guards who had been hired to protect this important speaker (and had obviously failed) darted into the retreating audience to search for suspicious characters, wearing their pristine black suits and carrying their guns at the ready; the others scanned the upper decks for a shady someone they could catch. None of them found anyone to blame.

The now-deceased speaker had been Donnell O'Harris, a leading candidate in the upcoming election. But there was clearly someone who would go to great lengths to keep that man from becoming president. He had a voice as smooth as peanut butter and plenty of money to spend on "helping the common man" (as was his campaign slogan). And a good bit of the country seemed to like him. He promised big changes would be made to fix the economy and grant more rights to minorities; et cetera, et cetera. The same shebang that politicians always use to gain the trust of the people.

But his opponents cried _lies!_ at his promises. They said he was planning to run the country like a tyrant, and he was going to be the man to destroy liberty. At least now he wouldn't get the chance.

The defeated guards gathered in front of O'Harris' dead body and discussed their next course of action. They needed to catch the criminal who did this. Assassins just don't get away. One of the guards broke away from the group to hold Mrs. O'Harris back from seeing her husband and screaming bloody murder. Another one entered the thinning crowd by the doors for another look-around for the assassin.

Mrs. O'Harris, with fat tears trailing down her aging face, broke out of the guard's grip and ran up to her husband. She kneeled down at his side, wailing with all her might. His head was blown open, and pieces of his brain and skull sat around the floor under him. His eyes were still open, but the life was drained from them. It was terrible; it was wrong. Mrs. O'Harris couldn't handle seeing him like this, but she couldn't pull herself away. Those lifeless eyes seemed to stare into her soul, seemed to whisper all the things her nightmares told her.

She fainted. Right on top of her husband. And she fell face-first into a puddle of his blood.

The guard sprung up to move Mrs. O'Harris and clean her off. Two more came to help him take her away. Once they were gone, a few more of the grouped guards went to search for more clues. The stadium was empty by now, but there was no doubt that outside the walls, hysteria still raged.

But one person walked through the crowd rather calmly. She took one slow stride after another forward, ignoring the people sobbing and yelling around her. She kept her gaze low to the ground, trying to make herself so insignificant no one would notice her. They wouldn't suspect her of being capable of assassinating a guarded official, not with the air of fragility and innocence that swirled around her hazel eyes and brown hair.

A barely visible smile somehow found its way onto her impassive face. The chaos surrounding almost gave her a sort of high. _She _created this. _She _affected the lives of all these people in such a way that they will never forget her doing. _She _caused them all to break out into mass hysteria. But none of them will know, and there will be no consequence to her for creating this chaos. Too bad this would be her last mission before she retired. She'd miss the high.

She walked until she was about four streets away from the stadium and then called a cab to take her away. There was some celebratory vodka in her fridge at home that just couldn't wait to congratulate her on her successful mission.

She gave one last look at the stadium in the distance and sent it one last thought. _I hope you enjoyed your gift, evil man._

As she spun away in the back of the taxi, the men dressed in black grouped back up. Mrs. O'Harris had been taken care of and was being cleaned and looked after somewhere safe in the stadium. Now, the men awaited one last coworker for any more news.

He walked through the doors briskly, holding something his hand. "I know who did it," he said gruffly. "I found this taped to the entrance door." He opened his palm to reveal a rose petal. The others hung their heads down in shame. They knew whose mark that was.

Lady Specter had struck again.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: The 2p characters will come up in the next chapter :P<p> 


	2. Lady Specter

Chapter Two: Lady Specter

She was a crafty woman, that Lady Specter. No one knew where she came from or who she worked for. No one knew if she acted alone or if she was even a lady at all. But what they did know was that she liked to strike down officials in broad daylight within a large crowd. She had been the one who was blamed for several successful assassinations throughout the world—twelve in the US alone. And she had gotten away every single time, leaving only a rose petal attached to the entrance door as a symbol of her presence.

Lady Specter seemed like a very fitting name. She was a ghost—a shadow of malevolence that acted behind crowds of people and could not be touched to stop. And the "Lady" part made her seem all the more sophisticated and mysterious. Or, at least, that's what Adriel Short thought as she read about her online.

The article was a little over a year old, but it was still very interesting. This one woman was able to kill off so many highly guarded figures without being identified. It was pretty amazing. Although, the story of Lady Specter just kind of stopped after the assassination of Donnell O'Harris. Investigators speculate that she was actually some ex-soldier who committed suicide in the area a week after the murder, which almost disappointed Adriel in a way.

"Can I use the computer?" a voice asked from behind her. It was her roommate, a girl with short blonde hair, brown eyes, and a broken arm named Chloe. Adriel had met her at the hospital a few weeks ago when she had nowhere to live, so Chloe had very kindly offered up her and her boyfriend's apartment to the needy. "I need to write an essay," she explained.

Adriel nodded vigorously, her short brown hair falling into her face. "I'm sorry. Of course you can!" Chloe was going to college, and Adriel respected that, so she gave up the computer immediately.

That left her with nothing to do. She had nothing of her own—even her clothes Chloe had bought for her out of pity. She sat around on the couch for a bit, just thinking, thinking and trying to remember Before. But remembering was hard and thinking was boring, so she ultimately did nothing but breathe.

Chloe was about half-way down a page of bullshit when Adriel's presence caught her attention. "You know," she said, "You should probably get a job. No offense, but it kind of sucks for me to pay for your food when you don't bring in any money to help."

Adriel nodded. Chloe had given this same speech before. But Adriel just couldn't get a job; she couldn't make a boring routine out of her life to suffice her roommate. Of course, she would never say that out loud since she didn't want to offend Chloe and then get kicked out of the apartment. Chloe stared at her and waited for an answer. Finally, Adriel said, "Okay, I'll try."

She didn't really try. She grabbed her blue coat and went for a walk around the city to save herself from hours of staring at the wall and not thinking of anything. The sky grew darker and darker above her, and the people along the streets thinned out, but Adriel was too busy in her own mind to notice the sky or the people or the fact that she should probably get back to the apartment soon.

That idea didn't pop into her head until she saw a big, black van with tinted windows approach her slowly, creeping its way toward her. The idea of danger made her weary of the van, but she didn't let that show and kept walking to the apartment building. But then the van stopped and shit happened.

Three pairs of hands gripped Adriel very tightly and threw her into the van. A flood of emotions went through her body as the three people jumped back into the car and the ground started moving. She could feel confusion and a whole lot of shock, but there was a surprising lack of fear_. I could handle these fools if they tried anything_, her mind assured her.

That thought caused the most confusion for her. How did she feel so confident that she could handle her captors? Did she know them from Before and some bit of familiarity settled in her brain now? She wished she knew.

Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dark. She took a seat against the wall behind the passenger's seat and crossed her arms. It smelled horrible in there, like something had died, decomposed, and then a sickly "mountain fresh" kind of perfume was sprayed over it to try to mask the odor of death. It made her want to puke.

The three people who had grabbed her flopped onto the ground around her. Two more people sat in the front. Was five people really needed for a kidnapping? Adriel really didn't feel like dealing with this crap, but she was curious to see how it would play out. So she didn't fight, no matter how stupid her decision might have been.

"Ciao," one of them finally said. "We've been looking for you for quite a while now, Lady Specter."

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I'm not really going to write accents. Dialect always annoyed me. Oh well. But I will add in some things from other languages I know (or have Googled) if I think it's appropriate. Just letting you know.<p> 


	3. The Wrong Girl

Chapter Three: The Wrong Girl

He was Italian. That was something Adriel wasn't expecting. That and the fact that he claimed she was someone she had only heard about today. She would have said something about the false accusation, but the man just kept running his mouth.

"Ooh, you're surprised we knew who you really are, aren't you? Well, it only took us a year. After you fell from FBI radar, _we _still kept an eye out for you. You've been a hard one to catch, but it's nice to see you in person. I admire your work, though you got a bit careless towards the end of your career, didn't you?" And on and on he went talking about stuff she didn't know about.

In the dimmed light, she could see his dark, reddish-brown hair and weird, pink-colored eyes. He didn't seem like he would shut up any time soon, so Adriel's attention drifted away from him a little bit. She slipped into a habit she had picked up a while back, a habit of trying to remember Before. She almost fell into a daydream, wondering what her life was like. Was she really an assassin, or was this just some kind of prank?

Something the man with the pink eyes said finally peaked Adriel's interest. "Well, Lady Specter, I have a proposition for you. There are these… special people we have been targeting for a while that we need a little help… taking care of." He looked away almost embarrassed as he spoke. "They've evaded us for a while now. We need you to take care of them. Can you handle that?"

Finally, he paused to let Adriel speak. She opened her mouth, hoping to explain the misunderstanding, but was cut off by a new voice. "Luciano," he said, a New York accent present in his words, "you really need to shut up already." It was the guy on her left that spoke. "Can't you see you're overwhelming our… guest?" The way he said it was pretty creepy. He followed his sentence by breathing in deeply through his nose, and Adriel realized with slight horror that he was sniffing her hair.

He stopped at her ear where he smiled slyly and whispered, "Sorry about him, dollface. I'll take care of him later if you want me to." He pulled himself away and laughed heartily. Adriel meanwhile tried to wipe the creep's gross breath off her ear.

"Allen, you don't have to be so creepy," the guy to her right complained. Then he added under his breath, "How am I even related to you..?"

"Shut the hell up, James," Allen shouted. "I wasn't being creepy!"

"Dio mio, _both _of you shut up!" Luciano commanded them. With a bit of grumbling, they did cease their bickering. Luciano shook his head, and the two guys up front snickered. "So, what do you say? We'll pay you well, if that's what you're waiting for."

Adriel shook her head. It was time to tell her captors the truth. Hopefully they wouldn't get mad and kill her. They seemed like the kind of people prone to violence, and if she didn't feel so confident right now, she would surely be scared for her life. "Guys, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not Lady Specter."

They all just stared at her. The Asian guy in the front even turned around to look at her, and the blonde driving tilted his head to hear her better. She kept going with her explanation. "I live in an apartment in the same highly-populated city where Lady Specter took her last victim! Don't you think it's a bit improbable for her to still be here?"

Luciano shrugged. "No. You hid in the middle of a crowd where no one would expect you to be because they figured you'd flee. I don't see anything wrong with that."

She let out an exasperated sigh. "Look, I don't even know how to operate a gun, and, as far as I know, I haven't even hurt a fly."

"Quit lying to us!" Luciano commanded, but there was something in him that didn't seem to belong. There was an undertone of doubt; his confidence was deflating. No one but Adriel must have noticed, though.


	4. Journey Away from the Norm

Chapter Four: Journey Away from the Norm

Adriel sat in that car for what seemed like forever, enduring all the tough-guy silence and the not-so-accidental slips of Allen's hand onto her body. At some point, to Adriel's delight, he had fallen asleep. She could take an obnoxious snorer over an unwarranted pervert any day. Meanwhile, James took out a cigarette and lit it, breathing smoke all over the car and getting wrapped up in his own mind. It disgusted Adriel, who turned away from him and faced Allen instead. The sight of one brother was not much better than the breath of the other.

All the while, Luciano stayed on his phone, anxiously texting someone about something. He looked pissed off whenever he got a text, but in a playful way. He would pull out the phone quickly when it vibrated, grimace at the message, then type a response with a smug look. Adriel was so bored sitting there doing nothing that she fabricated a whole story behind Luciano's mysterious friend.

His name was Todd, and they met each other after Luciano dropped out of high school and ran away from his broken home. He was trying to sleep on a bench in a park in the middle of the night when Todd found him. Feeling sympathy for this strange and dirty fellow, Todd offered Luciano a real place to sleep at his apartment. Once Luciano opened his eyes, it was love at first sight. He accepted the kind offer.

Todd lived in a terribly shitty apartment on the bad side of town. It turned out that Todd was also a delinquent high school drop-out. They immediately clicked, and Todd was very open about having a crush on his guest. Luciano, however, struggled with the realization that he loved the kind-hearted Tom back. That's why he was so conflicted about texting him.

Though, Luciano's usual nasty personality usually prevailed over his mushy feelings for Todd, so they hadn't gotten very far in their relationship. Todd was very jealous about all the other boys Luciano decided to hang out with, but he kept a smile on his face for Luciano anyways and—

"Why have you been staring at me for the last fifteen minutes?" Luciano finally questioned after Adriel started to annoy him with that dreamy look on her face.

She snapped out of her weird reverie and glared at him. "I'm sorry, but there's not much else for me to do right now."

Allen's eyes suddenly popped open. "You could do me," he said, still lying on the floor. Adriel face-palmed. She should have seen that coming.

"You're fucking disgusting," James said, shaking his head.

"Not as disgusting as you, James! If you're not gonna share, at least open a fucking window when you smoke!" Allen shouted as he sat up.

"That's completely different and you know it," James stated. Their brotherly bickering took off then, and not even Luciano's bossy commands could get them to quit. The fight was so pointless and stupid that it's not even worth writing.

The blonde driver took a deep breath. He was very clearly pissed off, grinding his teeth together in complete aggravation. Suddenly, he yanked the car wheel around hard, and the car spun in an uncontrollable circle. Everyone stopped yelling at each other to scream "Lutz! Stoooop!"

Once the car came to a halt, Lutz yelled at everyone, "Halts Maul!" He was breathing heavily and stared down everyone in the back through the rearview mirror with his mean, purplish eyes. It was a good five minutes before anyone could get their bearings and Lutz started driving like a normal person again.

Adriel was thrown to the opposite wall and sat on James' arm. Once she realized, she apologized and moved herself. "It's okay," he told her.

Next to them, Luciano had found himself on Allen's lap. "Oh, Luciano, I didn't know you rolled that way," Allen purred to the boy.

Luciano scrambled off of Allen's lap so fast, he would have put cheetahs to shame. "Like hell, pervert!" he shouted. Allen chuckled at his response before resorting back into his nap. Luciano put his focus back onto his phone, and James took out his iPod to listen to some music. That left Adriel to fantasize again.

It looked like Luciano had begun to play a game since his focus on his cell phone screen suddenly doubled and he didn't look away. Adriel imagined he was playing High School Story and building the biggest and best high school anyone had ever seen. And she suspected James to be listening to some really obnoxious J-Pop since he harbored a secret love for the bubbly Japanese music no one knew about. And she pictured Allen frolicking through a meadow of cotton candy flowers with pastel unicorns and floating bunnies following alongside him in his dream.

It wasn't long before Lutz stopped the car again. This time, though, the park was not preceded by a crazy spin of anger. Through the tinted window, Adriel could see a small, dilapidated two-story house with broken window shutters and patches of missing paint. Two of the upper story windows were shattered, and the front door hung haphazardly on one hinge. Their house wasn't exactly glamorous.

Everyone got out to head inside. Everyone except for Adriel and the Asian in the passenger's seat.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I used Google to find the German phrase, so I'm sorry if it's wrong. It's supposed to be the rude version of "Shut up."<p> 


	5. Testing the Assassin

Chapter Five: Testing the Assassin

At first, the Asian in the front seat just stared at Adriel with his freaky red eyes, an amused expression faintly painted on his face. Adriel watched him back, though she looked much less entertained. She couldn't help but let her eyes trail up and down the tattoos and scars on this guy's arms. So many stories he could tell, yet he remained silent.

"I… guess I should go inside?" Adriel asked.

He ignored her question and instead said, "I got to design your test. You're in for absolute terror. I believed you when you said you weren't Lady Specter." He got out of the car then, leaving Adriel alone with her thoughts.

But she couldn't think. All that resided in her mind was a long string of curse words, and that couldn't help her process what to do. She stayed in the car until someone physically pulled her out. She was led up to the house, and it was there, standing in the doorway, she began to think again.

Was this… fear? No, her mind refused to accept the feeling. Overwhelming confidence filled her mind and body again. She could handle whatever they threw at her. And she did.

* * *

><p>Apparently, the Asian (whose name was Kuro) had designed a cage for Adriel to stand in that had a bomb rigged to the top of it. She had to assemble a sniper rifle and then shoot the dead center of a target within three minutes. He had said that he was very generous with the time and that if she shot anywhere on the target that wasn't a bull's eye, the bomb would detonate.<p>

"Challenge accepted," she had said once he was finished explaining. They had her already locked up in the cage and were walking away to hide at a safe distance to watch.

"Good," Kuro had said, "because a minute's up."

She knew exactly where to put what on the rifle and had it together in less than thirty seconds. She was amazed by this hidden ability she didn't know she had. It made her wonder what she _was _Before. Could she really have been Lady Specter?

Her shot couldn't have been anymore perfect. Her aim was dead-on.

The bomb didn't go off above her. Luciano unlocked the cage and yanked her out. "I knew you were lying," he said before giving her an uppercut square in the jaw. He walked away in a storm of rage, shouting over his shoulder, "Lock her up in her room!" Lutz followed quickly behind him, and Kuro left, too, a bit more reluctantly.

Adriel rubbed her jaw, the pain sharp and strong, but the shock stronger. He had no problem hitting her; he didn't even think twice about it. That was the type of people she was dealing with now.

She looked at the two guys left. Allen glanced away, pretending to focus on the house. James watched her, wondering what she'd do. She blinked at them. "I thought I _was_ telling the truth…" she mumbled. "But now I'm not sure of anything."

"Why?" James inquired. He took a step towards her. She really didn't seem like an assassin, yet she was a deadly shot. And she sincerely didn't know it. What was up with her?

She sighed. "I'd like to tell someone, but since you kidnapped me and all, I don't think it would be very smart to spill out my life story to you." She ran a hand through her brown hair and stared at the dirt.

He put a hand onto her shoulder, and she looked up through his sunglasses and into his tired, violet eyes. He came off as such a cold person, but maybe it was just a façade to cope with the people he found around him. Or maybe he was actually in a similar situation as Adriel. She didn't know, but for some reason, she felt like telling him what was up. "I have amnesia," she confessed. "I have no idea who I was Before, but I just _cannot_ let myself believe that I was Lady Specter. Although, now, I'm not so sure."

James let his hand fall back to his side and nodded at her. Now it all made sense. "I guess that's why you quit assassinating after O'Harris, eh?"

Adriel chuckled to herself a little. "I only learned about her—me?—_today_ because I happen to come across an article on her on the internet." James nodded at that and began walking towards the house. She felt a little better after telling him her life story (as short as it was), but tried to keep herself weary.

Allen followed behind them, bursting out with laughter. "Ah, the mysterious, badass Lady Specter hit her head and forgot herself. Hilarious ending for such a cool woman!"

She glared at him for a moment then turned her head to get him out of her line of sight. She was surprised to see James had joined her with his own glower. "There is no fucking ending yet, Allen. She's gonna take care of those first-player assholes for us because the fuckup that you are couldn't do it!"

"Hey, neither could you, Maplehoof," Allen spat back.

"But I'll have no problem taking care of a weak piece of shit like you," James snarled.

Allen suddenly swung a baseball bat from out of nowhere and began threateningly tapping it on his other hand. It was dark on the barrel, abnormally so. And nails had been dug into it. Thinking about what could have been done with that bat made Adriel sick. "Got something to prove, Canuck?"

"I don't have to _prove _anything," James stated flatly. He swung a hockey stick around out of thin air and let it hang over his shoulder. There was some bloody barbed wire on the end of it. Neither of these devices seemed like suitable sports equipment, and it wasn't hard to guess what they were up to. James held a sneer on his face as he said, "I guess you just need another ass-whooping, Yankee."

Adriel stood shocked nearby as the brothers sized each other up, spitting vicious words at each other. They raised their weapons to strike, but their fight was cut off by a new voice.

"Allen! James! I made cupcaaakes!" A man with messy, strawberry blonde hair ran up to the group from the back doors of the house. Both brothers muttered a cuss word under their breath. Adriel watched the strange new man with slight wonder; he wore a bright, pastel pink sweater vest with a sky blue bowtie. He was the exact opposite of everyone who had kidnapped her.

"Oliver, now's not the time," Allen grumbled. As this Oliver came closer, Adriel could see he was carrying a tray of cupcakes. He must have made pastry personifications of himself because each cake was also very bright and cheerful-looking. She was almost freaked out by the whole show. She would surely not accept a desert from this psychopathic freak.

Oliver feigned disappointment at Allen's comment. "It's always cupcake time!" he declared. Adriel noticed the thick British accent in his voice. "Plus, I made them to congratulate you guys on a job well done capturing Lady Specter!" He looked over at Adriel and stuck his cupcake tray out a little at her. "Would you like one, LS?"

Adriel took a step back. "I don't think I should take pastries that are meant to celebrate my capture."

"Are you _sure_?" He shook the tray around a bit and wiggled his oddly thick eyebrows. "They're goood." His excited gaze met her less-than-enthusiastic one. He had really cool eyes. They were a bright cerulean blue and had cool, pink swirls in them, matching his sweater vest and bowtie perfectly.

She stood her ground. "No, thank you."

He shrugged. "More for me then." He plucked one off the tray and licked the icing off. As he shoved the rest of the dessert into his mouth, he held the tray out to Allen and James. They both shook their heads vigorously.

James sighed. "Alright, let's get Lady Specter to her room then." She followed him and Allen into their house, and Oliver dawdled up behind them.

The inside was just as shitty and broken as the outside. They first entered what was supposed to be the living room. There was an old TV plugged up to the wall, playing a soccer game, and an ugly orange couch in the middle of the room that was torn and had some stuffing spilling out. The walls were painted a dull green color that ran in globs to the dirty, gray carpet.

They led Adriel down the hallway to the entrance of the house, which had the same general gross color and feel as the living room, and then up the stairs to the second floor. The walls up here had a dumb, blue wallpaper design of birds that was barely visible through all the dust and tears. They pointed to the bathroom door (which was at the top of the stairs) and then took her down to the end of the hallway. There were three bedrooms there, and Adriel's was the last one.

Allen and James let her walk in ahead of them. It was very cramped in this room, and the bed was unmade. There was a big window behind the bed that overlooked the backyard, but half the glass was knocked out and a big spider web had replaced it. The floor and walls had originally been a light color, but had decayed to duller shades over time. There were splotches of dark patches about the room, and she was afraid to ask what it was.

She turned to see if her escorts were going to come in. Only Oliver was at the door still. He gave and eerily happy smile and singsonged, "Enjoy your stay." The door shut and locked from the outside.

Adriel really felt trapped now.


	6. The Mission

Chapter Six: The Mission

Adriel sat on the bed and stared at the wall. She daydreamed the weirdest things to pass the time. What it would be like to be a butterfly. How it would feel to go through that rapid metamorphosis in a chrysalis. How it would be to wake up one day, rise out of bed, and just magically have wings.

If she was a human with wings, she wouldn't be in this situation. The wings would make her too noticeable to get away with murder. Her whole life would be completely rewritten. She probably wouldn't have joined the army had she had wings at the time.

Wait. Joined the army?

Yeah. She could hear the voice in her ear as she recited her information to the recruitment officer over the phone. She could feel the sweat run down her back as she ran through the training course in the heat during boot camp. She could see the target through the scope on her sniper rifle just as she was about to pull the trigger.

She couldn't remember anything else but those few glances at Before. She tried but to no avail. She smiled to herself like an idiot anyway. The memories may actually come back. That was something to be excited for, despite her surrounding situation Now.

She lay down onto the bed. She hadn't realized before that they had drove all night, and it must have been late morning/early afternoon now. Her drowsiness was finally kicking in, and her adrenaline was falling out. She closed her eyes…

…And immediately opened them when she heard the door slam open. She sat straight up and saw Luciano standing in the doorway, a very pissed off expression on his face (so not much different from normal). "Okay, look," he said, approaching her. "I'm going to go over the details of your mission, okay?" When she didn't respond, Luciano kept going.

"Your targets will be pretty hard to get. They look like regular people, but they're actually immortal. That's what makes them so tough to kill. It seems like God bends reality to their safety, especially when one of us tries to take them down. Our plans always fail, so we've looked to outside sources." He looked almost embarrassed to say it, like speaking each word sent a bullet through his ego. "That's where you come in."

Adriel looked to the floor as he continued. "Your first target will be Feliciano Vargas. By intercepting his emails and text messages, I was able to find out he will be celebrating carnival in Venice. That gives us a week to hone your skills." He sighed. "I guess that you lost when you got amnesia."

He rolled his eyes before he continued. "Everyone but Oliver will escort you to Venice. We'll stay in a hotel in the city. You will have a week to kill Feliciano, which is more than enough time. You're welcome." He then began to describe what Feliciano looked like; a bit like Luciano but with lighter hair, amber eyes, pasty white skin, and much less muscles than him (according to Luciano, at least).

Once he finished, he turned around and began to walk out the door before remembering something else. "Oh yeah, and your reward is no longer money. Your life is what you will get out of a successful mission." Adriel gulped. "And prepare for training with Kuro tomorrow. He's really looking forward to kicking your ass—I mean, preparing you for your assassin duties."

He laughed on his way out and locked the door. Adriel was left alone with the growing pile of shitty responsibilities that had been forced upon her. "Immortal my ass," she said to herself in an effort to trick herself into feeling prepared. She still didn't feel prepared. Her confidence was falling along with her energy levels.

She lay down in the bed and covered herself in the blankets. She'll feel better tomorrow. And she'll kick Kuro's ass, too.

* * *

><p>Kuro wasn't exactly a <em>teacher<em>. He didn't say anything to _help_ Adriel. Mostly, he used martial arts moves on her to beat the snot out of her. She tried her best to block him, and she was surprisingly good at that. But Kuro was quick and offensive. A purely defensive strategy was no match to beat him. Needless to say, the promise she made yesterday never came through.

She guessed his teaching strategy was "Follow my lead and maybe you'll succeed." But he knew she couldn't beat him, and she realized that very soon. Her goal every day was to not let him hurt her as bad as he did the first day. She could barely move after the first day.

Even when Kuro gave her the advantage with a knife, he was able to disarm her early in the fight and win. He said she'd have to get used to the knife because she could not pull out a sniper rifle inconspicuously in the crowded streets of Venice during carnival. She thought that was exactly the kind of situation Lady Specter _liked_, but she really didn't bring it up.

On the day that was planned to be their last training session before they left for Venice, Adriel was able to nab a thin slice through Kuro's upper arm with her knife. At that, Kuro looked at the small wound, then at her. He nodded his approval. She smiled ever so slightly before defending herself against another one of his onslaughts.

She was beat up good after that, but she did hold that one tiny victory over Kuro that gave her some confidence back. He assured her that stealth was the best way to go when it came time to take out Feliciano, but he wasn't a hard opponent should hand-to-hand combat arise.

They packed the black van with the tinted windows with their suitcases and piled into it. Lutz drove, and Luciano rode shotgun. Kuro leaned back onto his suitcase in the back of the van and drifted off to sleep, evaporating into the background darkness. Allen sat against one side, so Adriel sat against the opposite side, but not before Allen smacked her butt. "Oh, come on, doll, you don't have to be that way. Come sit with me."

"Quit it," James commanded as he hopped into the van. Allen slapped his butt, too. That earned him a punch in the face from James. Allen laughed as he rubbed his face, and James slid down behind the driver's seat.

Once they took off for the airport, nearly everyone found their boredom carrying them onto their cell phones. Adriel didn't have anything to do again, so her mind wandered. She assessed her situation for what felt like the hundredth time. She was surrounded by murderers and psychopaths who showed no remorse when they hurt her. And she couldn't bring herself to think of an escape. There was no one she could turn to for help, at least no one she remembered.

In all honesty, she felt kind of energized by being around these people. It was almost like she enjoyed the constant danger. She had been able to handle it so far. Maybe these people were just innocent guys wrongfully led by the crazy Luciano. She doubted it, but hadn't she doubted being Lady Specter as well?

Although at the same time she felt all the thrill course through her, she also wanted to cry. She really had no one to turn to for help. She was all alone and surrounded by monsters. Everyone she had known Before were meaningless to her Now.

When she woke up in the hospital, unable to recall anything, she couldn't even find a cell phone on her. She mentally kicked herself for her stupidity Before. And she knew she'd probably have to kick herself again in the future for her stupidity Now.

She tried to fight the overwhelming disappointment the hung around her shoulders, but she couldn't hide the slump in her shoulders or the sadness in her eyes.

Luckily, no one cared.

These were uncaring, unlawful people she was dealing with now. They didn't care about Adriel's feelings of loneliness. And neither could she; she couldn't let it get to her. She had a job to do, and that was all she had to focus on.

None of them sat next to her on the plane, thank goodness. It was some old, Italian man probably going back home for carnival himself who took up the seat next to Adriel. But Allen ended up sitting behind her, and whenever he got bored of whatever game he was playing on his PSP, he would kick her chair obnoxiously, then lean over and whisper into her ear an apology and a perverted promise to make it up to her. He was the most annoying person.

Luciano ended up in a seat next to Lutz way up in the front of the plane. James was in a seat on the opposite side of the plane two rows ahead of her, and he kept turning around to glare at Allen, who would just make a stupid face back at him. Kuro must have been somewhere further behind Adriel since she couldn't find him at all.

Other than Allen's occasional annoyance, Adriel really enjoyed the relaxation the plane provided. She didn't have to worry about getting beat up by Kuro, screamed at by Luciano, or poisoned by Oliver. They arrived in Venice all too quickly.


	7. Surprising Normal-ness

Chapter Seven: Surprising Normal-ness

The hotel they stayed in wasn't too expensive—and Adriel could see why. One of the lights in the room she had to share with Luciano and Lutz was completely shot, and the bathroom mirror was cracked, too. They probably chose it so that they could keep a low profile in the city, or because the airplane cost was probably ridiculous and they didn't have much money left. Adriel didn't really know.

They bought joined rooms: one for Luciano, Lutz, and Adriel and one for Allen, James, and Kuro. No one bothered to open the adjoining door yet, though. Either Allen and James were finally behaving themselves or Kuro had a lot more patience than Adriel thought was humanly possible around the two.

Luciano had ordered Adriel to sit on the floor and do nothing while he and Lutz unpacked. She obliged, but she sat on the seat in front of the desk in the corner of the room instead of on the floor. Luciano didn't seem to care, so she guessed it was ok. Lutz did most of the unpacking while Luciano fiddled around on his phone and drank wine. At least he was in a better mood than he was in America. Being home must have mellowed him out a bit.

Lutz was just about done stocking the drawers with his clothes when something from next door crashed. Loud voices filled the stillness of the neighboring room, undoubtedly Allen and James. The joining door slipped open during the apparent fight, and Kuro entered, his face unfazed by the chaos behind him. He took a seat on the end of Lutz' bed and stared out the window moodily.

"Those two really need to sort out their sexual tensions already," Luciano commented, not looking up from his phone.

Lutz laughed at that. It was a terrifying sound that no one should have been able to make. "You can say that again."

"Hai," Kuro agreed.

"Have you guys determined who will be sleeping on the floor?" Lutz asked him.

"No one is," Kuro explained. "They claimed the beds, and I took the chair."

Luciano chuckled at that. "You got the short end of the stick, il mio amico. Have fun with your back pains tomorrow."

"I can guess who got the floor in here." All three looked at Adriel for a moment. The fly on the wall, watching and listening but knowing better than to act. Then they continued to ignore her.

"But I'd rather have a girl in my room than two fratelli stupidi," Luciano said. The other two agreed.

The way they talked to each other caught Adriel off guard. They were so casual with each other, joking and messing around like any other group of friends. Even Kuro would crack a smile sometimes. Had she seen the three out in public some time when she didn't know them, she would have thought they were just a group of old friends hanging out. She wouldn't have been able to guess that they were psychotic sadists who had no problems kidnapping and hurting others.

The jet lag must have finally caught up to Adriel because she suddenly couldn't keep her eyes open and fell asleep, resting her head on the desk.

* * *

><p>She awakened to find the connecting door opened. Through it, Adriel could see Allen passed out on his bed, his arms spread out awkwardly and his mouth hung open. Jet lag must have affected him, too. Luciano, Lutz, and Kuro were nowhere to be seen.<p>

Adriel contemplated running away. She had no belongings and no one looking for her back in America, so it wouldn't matter _where _she was as long as she was away from these guys. Having Allen as a babysitter seemed like too perfect of a chance to let it pass by.

Keeping her eyes on him, she tiptoed over to the door. She went to reach for the handle, her heart thumping in her throat from the hopeful result. But then a voice spoke up from behind her and sent her twelve feet into the air in surprise. "What do you think you're doing?"

James stood coolly in the doorframe between the two rooms. Shit. "Uh… nothing," Adriel stammered. "I didn't see you there…"

Something she said must have made him mad since he scowled at her and cracked his knuckles. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Uh… nothing…" She took a few steps away from the door, and James stared her down as she took a seat back in the chair in front of the desk. She stared at the floor, wishing he would go back into the other room. But he walked further into the room and sat down on the edge of Luciano's bed.

He didn't seem angry anymore, thank goodness. Adriel was honestly still too tired to deal with that crap. But he was curious, so he sparked up a conversation. "What's your real name, Lady Specter?" he asked.

"Adriel Short," she answered.

He nodded, sliding his gaze to the floor. "It's pretty," he complimented awkwardly. She didn't say anything back. She was suspicious of this guy's motives. Why did he care?

After a while, he spoke up again. "Luciano, Lutz, and Kuro went out to get drunk. Said me and Allen were in charge of watching you while they were out. It's pretty crowded out on the streets right now with carnival and everything."

"I bet," Adriel commented. She didn't know what else to say. He grabbed a box of Cheez-Its out of his room and tossed them at her. She opened it without a word and started munching. She hadn't realized just how hungry she was.

"Are you prepared to go out there and try to find your target?" he asked. She shrugged. "Yeah, it won't be easy. Feliciano'll probably be wearing a mask to celebrate, and he'll probably have a German bodyguard like Lutz. I'm pretty convinced every Italian has a German bodyguard." He laughed at his own joke.

Adriel cracked the ghost of a smile, but it was gone within moments. "I didn't even think of that whole mask-thing," she admitted.

James nodded one too many times. "I'd suggest just looking for a pasty, white boy with a wimpy build and following him around until he's alone. Just make sure you don't mistake Luciano for him. They are pretty much the same person, after all." He laughed at himself again, but the humor was lost on Adriel.

His expression and tone suddenly became very serious. "Do you remember ever killing someone?" he questioned.

He stared into her eyes intensely, awaiting her answer. She sighed. "Not really. I can barely remember _anything_."

It hung around his mind for a moment before he explained further. "Murder just isn't something you can forget, no matter how bad your amnesia is… You don't know how often I've wished I could forget a few, but I _know _it's impossible." He was half-way muttering to himself at this point. "So if she's not a murderer, then who is she?" A long moment of silence filled the room. Adriel looked at the floor, and James checked something on his phone.

The day was pretty uneventful. It was weird for her to process that tomorrow she'd be on the hunt for a specific person's life. Tomorrow, she would be the assassin she was supposed to be.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: All the Italian in this chapter was brought to you by Google Translate, so I hope they're not wrong. Expect more in the future! :P The phrases used were "my friend" and "stupid brothers."<p> 


	8. Carnival in Venice

Chapter Eight: Carnival in Venice

The fateful day had finally come. Today, Adriel was going to find and kill Feliciano Vargas. Today, a person proclaimed as immortal shall fall. Today, failure was not an option if Adriel wanted herself to live. Luciano had made this all pretty clear when he came back to the hotel drunk out of his mind the next morning.

Allen and James had switched babysitting shifts whenever Allen had woken up. It was something like seven at night by that time, and James was looking ten times more tired than usual (which was saying something since he always looked tired). With little else to do, she ended up watching TV with Allen while James slept.

She wondered where Luciano, Lutz, and Kuro were and what was taking so long for them to get back, not that she minded their absence. It seemed so much more relaxed without them around, although that was probably more because the brothers were too jetlagged to fight each other.

Their shifts had switched back when the sun started to come up. Allen snored very loudly, and James kept sending him glares. Adriel started to feel the droop in her eyelids eventually, too. She fell asleep at the desk awkwardly, with her back arched over and one of her arms limp at her side, but who cared about how comfortable she was? No one, that's who.

Two hours of her nap went by, and she was suddenly dumped out of her chair and woken up. Luciano had come back, and he wasn't too happy with her. He yelled at her for sleeping when she could be out hunting Feliciano already. Carnival had started, and he could be anywhere! It was hard to completely understand him since he was slurring his words together in his drunken stupor, but Adriel got the gist. It was time for her to find her target.

After lecturing her, Luciano searched through the drawers in the room and found a simple, plastic half-face mask he had picked up on clearance at Wal-Mart for about two bucks. He threw it at her and the preceded to pass out onto his bed. Lutz followed suit, collapsing into his own sheets. Kuro, meanwhile, held an eerily pleasant attitude, but he wasn't necessarily drunk. He probably got his jollies from pushing a stray dog into the canal or something twisted like that. He wandered into his room and shut the door behind him nevertheless.

Since James was pretty much the only one awake at this point, he escorted Adriel out of the hotel and into the crowded main streets of Venice, where Carnival was kicking off. Almost everyone was wearing some kind of fancy mask. The glitzier, the better, it seemed. Meanwhile, Adriel wore a flimsy piece of crap that made her feel cheap compared to the magnificent masks the Italians around her wore.

She admired all the beautiful costumes people had on around them. Richly colored, overly feathered, beautifully sequined; dresses and suits of all levels of beautiful fashion marched around. Some of them matched with their partner, others with an entire group. But their costumes covered them from head to toe, and it would be impossible to identify anyone.

A few jesters wandered around, pulling tricks to woo the crowd. It was all very festive, and Adriel felt like such an outsider in the "new" jacket and jeans Luciano had given her. They were a bit baggy and worn even before Adriel actually ever put them on. She shuddered to think _where _he got the clothes, and she sincerely hoped no one died wearing these clothes.

It wasn't long before Adriel lost James in the crowd, though she got the feeling it may have been on purpose. She didn't waste any of her time searching for him among the partiers; he really wouldn't have been much of a help, anyway. She could handle this mission on her own.

But as she started her hunt, she couldn't help but feel completely alone in the crowd. She knew no one, and almost all of them were speaking Italian. She didn't even know what "Hello" was in Italian, yet the foreign language filled her ears from every direction. On top of that, she started feeling very self-conscious. She had only risked showering a few times, and the only way she was able to brush her hair was by using her own fingers to pull out the knots. Her mouth tasted like a swamp, and she couldn't imagine how it smelled to other people.

She knew she couldn't let any of that discourage her, though. She had a job she needed to execute, and her life depended on it. She could not let her surroundings and her personal problems distract her.

Hours had passed. She was really hungry, but she ignored it for sanity's sake. She could eat when she came back to the hotel after she took out Feliciano, if she could just _find_ him. It was proving to be a much harder task than she had originally thought.

A strange group of people caught Adriel's eye later into the evening. A tall, blonde guy face-palmed, muttering disappointedly to himself. He looked a lot like Lutz, but his eyes were very blue and his hair wasn't messy. A short Japanese man stood next to him, holding a camera to his face to take a picture of something. He looked exactly like Kuro, but the whole aura about him was different.

The Japanese man took a picture of two men dressed up similarly in frilly, blue coats, pantaloons, and fancy hats. Both of them were slender in an almost weak way—much like Luciano. One crossed his arms, sending a vibe of irritability around him, and his mask even held a vaguely annoyed expression. The other seemed much jollier, wearing a mask with a cute smile on it and raising his arm for no apparent reason.

Could this be Feliciano Vargas?

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I have only been to the carnival celebration in Venice once—in the video game <em>Assassin's<em> _Creed II_ (they called it carnevale), but that was supposed to be during the Italian Renaissance, so it might not be all that accurate for today's standards. Also, I recommend checking out pictures of the costumes from the carnival celebration in Venice if you don't know what they look like because they're really cool.


	9. Fate

Chapter Nine: Fate

He had to be Feliciano. But Adriel couldn't be sure until it was proven. She approached the group, trying her best to blend in with the crowd and stay invisible, and listened in on their conversation.

"Will you please stop taking goddamn pictures of us, Kiku? It's annoying," the irritated one complained angrily. He seemed so mad that he might snatch the camera right out of Kiku's hands and spike it to the ground. He didn't.

The happier guy—the one who was probably Feliciano—patted his back. "It's okay, Lovino," he said. "You know he has to, and it's carnevale! So we should all celebrate and be happy!"

Lovino muttered, "Whatever, stupid little brother."

Probably-Feliciano seemed to ignore him and instead turned to the blonde man. "I still don't see why you guys didn't want to wear masks. It's all part of the festivities."

And on and on they talked, wandering through the crowd. It was hard to inconspicuously follow them through the mass of people, but Adriel somehow managed. She learned the German's name was Ludwig, but she _needed_ to know the name of the other guy!

His stomach growled suddenly, so he announced to the group that he was going to get some food. "Don't be gone too long, Feliciano," Ludwig said as he watched his friend bounce away.

Adriel almost lost him when she fist-pumped in her relief. She had found her target, and much more easily than she had anticipated. Maybe fate was real after all.

Feliciano was pretty fast as he searched for food, but she was able to keep up with him. He turned down an alley, much to Adriel's delight, and there was no one around. She ran up behind him, knife poised and ready to strike. He wouldn't even see it coming. It'd be too easy.

But something stopped her, some hesitation in the back of her brain. The challenge stood in front of her, ready and waiting to be carried out. And with his death came the safety of her own life. But for how long? Wouldn't Luciano just have her move on to the next "immortal" target? So what really was the point in living just to be the pawn of a psychopath?

No. She couldn't let her moral conflict get in the way of her mission. She gripped the handle of the blade tighter, ready to strike for real.

In that moment, Feliciano decided to suddenly spin around on his heel. In a single panicked motion, Adriel hid the knife behind her back and retreated several feet. She said the first thing that came to mind so that she didn't look so suspicious. "Hey, um, this is kind of embarrassing, but would you mind showing me where I could get some food… I kind of got lost…"

He chuckled. "I think I did, too," he said. He was probably smiling, but he was wearing a full-faced mask, so it was pretty hard to tell. If he had seen anything suspicious, he didn't let on. It was safe to assume he was oblivious, which wasn't a surprise. He was supposed to be pretty stupid.

"Then I guess we should look for it together," she suggested. He nodded his head vigorously, then speed-walked out of the alley and back into the crowd. He said his name was Feliciano Vargas (so Adriel was definitely, miraculously correct!), and she gave him her name. He then started a monologue about pasta as he led her around Venice in the search of food.

A thought entered his mind, so he came to an abrupt stop and rummaged through his pockets. "You wouldn't happen to have any money with you right now, would you?" he asked, hopeful.

Adriel bit her lip. "I'm… kind of broke, actually. My… friends were the ones who paid for this trip and everything, and they all kind of… ditched me." She awaited his response, hoping she sounded believable. She didn't think she was all that great of a liar, even if half of the story was true.

He got really sad about that. "Oh… then I guess we won't be getting any food then. And I was really looking forward to pasta with you."

"I—" she started. She thought that she probably should have felt creeped out by this stranger's high hopes for dining with her, but she couldn't help but feel entirely flattered. And it might be kind of weird for her to feel this way, but no one she knew Now had cared all that much for her, but this guy just met her and was sad they couldn't have dinner together. "I'm sorry…"

"It's not your fault, Adriel," Feliciano reassured her with a smile. "I guess I was planning on letting Ludwig or Kiku pay for my meal. I should probably find them soon…"

Adriel nodded. "Yeah, and I guess I should head back to my hotel." She turned to leave. "It was nice meeting you, Feliciano." What she meant was, "It was nice not killing you, Feliciano."

"But before you go." He took out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote something onto it. Why he had these things and where he got them from was a mystery to her. The paper had a series of digits on it; his cell phone number. "We'll have to make up that dinner later, okay?"

She could only stare at this piece of paper in her hands as Feliciano walked away. This little gesture of kindness and friendship was enough to leave her speechless. And it was a damn good way to stop her from wanting to kill him. She slipped it into her shoe so she would never lose it.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: So Italy may have been a bit out of character… I'm sorry!<p> 


	10. No Rest for the Wicked

Chapter Ten: No Rest for the Wicked

By the time Adriel found her way to the hotel, her stomach was growling like a starving demon (which it pretty much _was _at this point) and the sun had disappeared from the sky completely. She had a small argument in her mind over which door she'd open, Luciano's or Allen's, and ultimately settled on the lesser of two evils.

Kuro was the one who answered the door. He didn't ask if she was successful in her mission. The loss of victory on her face must have told him the situation. He sat down at the desk in his room, stuck earbuds into his ears, and resumed watching his anime. Neither Allen nor James was also in the room.

Adriel peeked into Luciano's room to see if anyone was there. Nope, that room was just as empty as Allen's. It was just Kuro and her. She opened the fridge to find some Italian snacks chilling out inside it. No one was stopping her from devouring this food, so she ate them. It satisfied at least some bit of her hunger.

Her feet suddenly started hurting terribly. She _had _been walking around all day long, so she deserved to lay down now, right? She glanced at Kuro. He looked like he was so wrapped up in his anime that he wouldn't notice if Adriel snuck out. Then again, none of them were probably too concerned with her running away. They had let her go about her mission without any babysitting. They knew she had nowhere to go to in Italy, and she surely couldn't survive on the streets of a country she didn't know.

She couldn't think of a reason why she was so weary about laying down on a bed. Kuro surely wouldn't get mad; none of them were even his since he slept in the chair. So she walked over and plopped down on what she thought was James' bed and almost immediately fell asleep.

* * *

><p>James came in sometime after she had begun her nap in his bed. He sighed, slightly annoyed, but decided to get a shower instead of relax. It didn't really make much of a difference to him. When he emerged from the bathroom again, now in his pajamas (which consisted of flannel pants and a white t-shirt), he found that Kuro had ditched the room. Of course.<p>

He took a seat in the now-vacant desk chair and watched the second half of a hockey game on his phone. Adriel sprawled herself all across the bed, her snoring paralleled to Allen's. It was a pretty gross sight, but as long as she didn't drool all over his pillows, he didn't really care.

It was midnight dark outside when Adriel was jolted awake. One moment she was overlooking open fields of grass from a ridiculously high tower, and the next she found herself with her face to the floor of a hotel. A boot stood next to her head, and she followed the attached leg up to the owner's face. Due to her still-groggy thoughts, she could have sworn it was Feliciano standing there, and she even almost smiled. But upon further inspection, she realized it was a very angry Luciano.

Gripping her arm in a vice-like grasp, he yanked her up harshly to her feet. "Well? Did you get him?" he demanded. "Is Feliciano Vargas dead?" He was expectant of her answer, with a hint of excitement bubbling up behind his impatient scowl.

Adriel's eyes slid to the left of Luciano and focused on the television behind him. "Um… not exactly…"

"What do you mean?" His voice was a growl, low and menacing. Adriel dared to glance at him before she answered. He was pissed, his hands in fists and his jaw set.

"I mean, he kind of got away," she mumbled.

He hooked a blow to the side of her head. She fell back onto the bed from the sheer force. "What the hell are you doing here then? Get back out there and kill your target like the goddamn assassin you're supposed to be!" The outrage in his voice could not be missed."You cannot come back in here until you've succeeded, or else I might just kill you on the spot."

He marched into his own room, and Adriel pulled herself off the bed. Her head stung from the hit, and tears welded up in her eyes. She knew she'd have a headache for the rest of the night, but she tried to ignore it as best she could. She was strong enough to withhold her agony, right? She didn't want to give her captors any pleasure in her torture.

Only Kuro and Allen were missing from the hotel rooms now. Lutz was with Luciano in the other room, and James sat in the desk chair, playing on his phone with a bored expression on his face like he hadn't just seen Luciano hit and threaten her.

She stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She was angry, sad, and tired all at the same time, and she really just wanted to go back to sleep. But she managed to get her feet to walk her towards the street she had first seen Feliciano. There was a surprising lack of people compared to yesterday afternoon, but it must have been three in the morning. There was no way Feliciano was still up and walking about. It was pointless to be out here right now, but Luciano was too stupid to see that.


	11. Exhaustion

Chapter Eleven: Exhaustion

It was hopeless. Adriel had been searching for Feliciano for two days straight on barely any food or drink. She ripped her mask off in frustration and rubbed her eye. If only she had a bed to rest in. If only she had some money to get food with. If only her captors had prepared her for her job at all. A knife can't get you everything.

She pulled out the piece of paper with Feliciano's cell phone number written on it. It offered some comfort to her, which was nice. She wished she could just get a phone to call him with and arrange a meet-up. Then she could take care of him quickly and… She was kidding herself. She couldn't kill him. Not after the kindness he expressed to her.

If there was anyone she wanted to kill, it was Luciano. She hated him. She hated all of them. She may not have had much of a life to ruin, but they still managed to. And they used threats and force to try to get her to hurt another innocent person who was nothing but nice to her. They could stand to follow Feliciano's lead.

And they claimed she needed to kill him for dumb reasons. Feliciano was not immortal, and they were probably just too stupid to ever get him themselves.

She found a bench by a canal and took a seat, her eyelids immediately crashing closed. She was so tired. Resting for a moment wouldn't be bad, right? She could risk it, couldn't she?

She felt the bench sink next to her from the added weight of another person. Her eyes popped open and she looked at the man who sat down next to her. He wore a simple, full-face mask that didn't look too expensive, but Adriel could tell who it was by the flannel shirt and the messy ponytail. "Hey James," she said. She was a bit surprised since she didn't expect to see him, but she tried not to let him catch on to her shock.

He pulled off his mask, revealing the bags under his violet eyes and the stubble across his chin. "Hey Adriel. Your search for Feliciano must be going well."

"More like the exact opposite," she spat. "It's not exactly easy pointing out a specific stranger in a crowd that stretches almost all the way across Venice. And especially when you're about to collapse from hunger and exhaustion."

His sigh was long and… sympathetic? Was he capable of sympathy? "Yeah, Luciano is an ass. He can't comprehend that other people have basic human needs, too. It's like the whole world fucking world revolves around him, and everyone needs to do as he says or else. I'm sorry for anyone who has the misfortune of meeting him."

"Me, too. But at least he treats you guys like you're somewhat equal to him. I'm like a piece of trash." She looked down at the ground.

James chuckled gruffly. "Let's just say we've all had to prove ourselves to that bastard. You, on the other hand, take his blows without much of a protest. But you kind of have to. You're way outnumbered if you were to fight back. Lutz and Kuro would be on your ass so fast, you wouldn't know what hit you." Adriel didn't say anything, so he finished his monologue with, "He could always treat you worse, you know. I've seen it before."

"It still sucks," she muttered. "I hate this."

Neither of them said anything for a while. James seemed to be thinking something over. With his concentration, one might think he was solving logarithms in his mind or something, but Adriel couldn't see someone like him randomly doing math problems. Maybe he was trying to remember what he had for dinner yesterday so he knew to eat something else today. Or, better yet, he was thinking about his family's pancake recipe. Adriel could really go for some pancakes right now…

Her stomach let out a lion of a growl. She blushed, but she knew she shouldn't have been embarrassed about it. James may not have been able to remember what he had for dinner yesterday, but Adriel knew exactly what she had: nothing. And the day before that? Unappetizing snacks. She was so hungry.

The sound took James out of his chance. "Would you like for me to buy dinner for you?"

Adriel couldn't say yes fast enough.

* * *

><p>They went to a restaurant for some fancy Italian food. It looked a bit on the pricey side, but not over-the-top expensive. The outside was very quaint and charming. There was a small patio with little sets of black tables and chairs for outside dining. Only a few people were out there—it was a bit cold for that. The patio led to a brick entrance with cute, white-paneled windows on either side of the matching door.<p>

The name of the restaurant was written in elegant, swirling letters on regal, maroon awnings over the windows and door, although Adriel had no idea what it said. However, that detail didn't take away from the niceness of this restaurant.

Inside was just as nice. It was bright, and the table clothes were a soft cream color, matching the dull glow given off by the combination of torch-like wall lights and scarce hanging lights on the ceiling. There were many groups of people in here, from large parties of friends to individual couples on dates. And at every unattended seat, a glass and a folded napkin holding silverware was placed, anticipating a future diner.

Adriel felt entirely too dressed down for coming here. The hostess on duty gave them an accidental look of disapproval before catching herself and becoming professional again. Adriel couldn't blame her for being so judgmental. She probably looked like she slept on the streets last night and then woke up and rolled in some dirt for fun. And James must have looked like a punk with his untamed ponytail and don't-give-a-damn attitude. He was completely unimpressed with this place.

The hostess brought them to a vacant table nonetheless. Money was money, after all, no matter what kind of people it came from. James ordered them both some ravioli and fine wine, and Adriel ended up inhaling it.

They didn't talk much since they were too busy devouring the delicious food to get any words out. Or, at least, Adriel was. Barely eating anything after two days can really make a person hungry. He ended up buying a second meal for her and two or three more drinks. By the end of the dinner, Adriel was stuffed and drunk. It was nice.

James led her to the hotel they were staying at. He didn't believe Luciano would really kill her for staying here. He hadn't even been back at the hotel himself for two days, so he probably wouldn't even see her there. Besides, he couldn't let their captive roam the streets drunk after he made her that way (whoops on his part).

Adriel was a lot more talkative when she was full of alcohol. She kept asking James why they needed to kill Feliciano anyways and why they thought he was immortal. He really didn't feel like dealing with her crap, so he kept telling her, "I'm not allowed to tell you" and "He just is." She would then ramble on about what she thought their intentions were. She was way off, but it was still pretty entertaining for James. Then she would ask why again and the cycle would continue.


	12. Adriel and James

Chapter Twelve: Adriel and James

Adriel was going to have a very distracting hangover the next morning. It was really splendid timing considering tomorrow was their last day in Venice and her last chance to get Feliciano.

She tore off her jacket as soon as she walked in, complaining about how hot she was, and then began to loot through the cabinets and refrigerator in search of food. James told her there was none left over. No, not even in Luciano's room. Besides, she just ate, so food shouldn't be her first priority right now.

He was playing a game on his phone, so, of course, she wanted to play, too. That was when his patience broke and he told her to go to bed. She said she was supposed to sleep on the chair, but he was in the way. "But I'm okay with sharing, though," she informed him and plopped down on top of him.

He gagged and pushed her off. "No, you can sleep in my bed. I don't fucking care. Just go the hell to sleep."

She seemed fine with that suggestion and pulled the covers up over her head. He took his earbuds out of his pocket and stuck them into his ears. Why did he offer her food and then have to babysit her? What the hell was he thinking?

Her obnoxiously loud snoring filled the room, amplified by her drunkenness, but, luckily, James could not hear it. He lit a cigarette and watched the end of another hockey game on YouTube, which then led him to watch the "best moments in hockey", then the "funniest moments in hockey", then the "stupidest things Americans say", and so on. Somehow, he ended up on a string of cat videos. What had YouTube done to him?

His eyelids drooped closed during a particular old but classic video where a fat cat played a piano. He only opened them again because he heard the door creak open slowly, creepily. Like an attempt at dramatic effect in a crappy horror movie. Or it was just his sleepy imagination that amplified the eeriness. Either way, he got up to investigate.

The prominent light from the hallway shone brightly around the figure, but it cast a shadow over his face. He took a heavy step into the room, then another. He was sluggish, probably drunk. No one seemed able to keep away from the alcohol, did they? James could tell who it was by the stupid hairstyle on his head with the dumb cowlick.

The figure's face finally found the light of the room as the door swung shut behind him. There was a light rose color to his cheeks, and he looked too content with himself and his surroundings to be sober. James rolled his eyes. Babysitting one drunk was bad enough. "You're a fucking mess," he commented, absentmindedly tapping some ashes off his cigarette into the ash tray on the desk.

Allen grinned at his brother, planning on telling him something very witty. "Hey, James. I didn't even see you there. It was like you had just dissolved into the background or something."

James' jaw set as his body tensed. "Screw you."

Adriel shifted in her sleep, causing Allen to switch his focus to her. Even covered underneath layers of blankets, her sleep was anything but graceful, and now a hand and a foot stuck out from under the sheets.

She was lying in James' bed. A girl was lying in James' bed. And her jacket was on the other side of the room. And his hair _was _more messed up than usual. A mischievous smirk broke out on Allen's face.

Meanwhile, James stared him down. The gears must have really been spinning in his mind. James had never seen him think this much at one time. The smile made him uneasy, though. "The hell is wrong with you?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing." His voice was high and sing-songy, like he knew something he wasn't supposed to. He snaked his arm across James' shoulders, his head tilted back proudly. "My prude of a brother finally got laid is all." James threw Allen's arm off his shoulder.

"What are you talking about?" James' question never registered in Allen's ears, for he was too busy with his own inquiry.

"Who is she?" Allen asked. When James didn't answer, he walked over to investigate for himself. He mistook James' cold shoulder as the defeat of a lie and pulled the girl's blanket down enough to see her. Once he registered Lady Specter's face, he grinned like he just learned the secret of the universe.

"Get that creepy-ass smirk off your face," James ordered. He could see the fallacy Allen had concocted in his mind about him and Adriel, and he did not appreciate it. "You're such a pervert."

Allen wiggled his eyebrows as he took a step toward his brother. "Yeah, and I'd like to know all the pervy things you and LS did together while you had the hotel room all to yourself. Spill the juicy details for me, bro."

"There are no 'juicy details' to spill, _bro_," James spat at him.

"Ah, come on, James," Allen pouted, flopping down onto the corner of his bed and crossing his arms. "You never tell me anything. You're such a fucking buzzkill. You can't tell me you two didn't even…" He began to list a series of situations that would make a schoolgirl blush deep shades of crimson, but James was too cool and manly to blush. He replied with a no after every scenario Allen suggested, only growing more impatient with him. Finally, Allen said, "Well, then, I guess you wouldn't mind if I slipped in next to her myself, then, right?"

He started unbuttoning his shirt, a disgusting smirk on his face, but James punched him in the side of the head to stop him. He collapsed in a heap on the floor. James couldn't stop the satisfied smile that crossed his face for a moment before he shoved the cigarette back between his teeth and lifted Allen into his own bed.

He had really outdone himself taking care of his brother today. Oh, and Adriel, too.


	13. The Last Day in Venice

Chapter Thirteen: The Last Day in Venice

The headache was intense, like her brain had been trampled and helplessly left out in the desert sun to dry up and die alone. Even her very thoughts sent a rockslide of crushing anguish through her skull. She ultimately sat under the sheets with her eyes closed and didn't move, praying this splitting headache would pass over soon. She knew very much that it probably wouldn't. Sometimes knowledge sucked.

Her stomach lurched. She threw the covers off of herself and nearly flew toward the bathroom. She flinched in the unexpected brightness of the room around her and her brain screamed at her to get back under the dark covers, but the urge of her stomach was stronger and dragged her to the toilet.

She may have heard James utter something as she rushed by him, but she wasn't too sure, nor did she really care right now. The bathroom door couldn't have been flung open any harder. She stammered into the small space and wretched up all her intestines into the toilet bowl.

It was strange that her mind wandered through a thriving garden of thoughts as her body puked up all she had ingested yesterday. Did she really even drink that much? Had James stayed up all night? Was she really this light a drinker? Was today really the last day in Venice? Was her face really this close to a hotel toilet seat? Gross. Did James watch her sleep? Seriously, where did she even get all this alcohol from? Dammit, she had to kill Feliciano today. There was no more puke left in her system now, right?

She hovered over the bowl for a moment, taking deep breaths. Was it over? God, she hoped so.

A hand grasped her shoulder and pushed her away from the toilet violently. She was uncomfortably shoved against the tub as the disturbing sound of someone else throwing up their insides filled her ears. Once she gained her senses a bit more, she registered the other person as Allen, his hair disheveled worse than usual with his bed head and still wearing his signature bomber jacket. It was really nasty watching him, so she pulled her gaze away. She wished she had the ability to get up and leave, but she could feel no energy in her body to do so.

Once he had spewed out all of his internal organs, he slumped against the cabinets under the sink gasping for air. They kind of just stared at each other for a while before anyone said anything. Allen broke the silence. "This isn't what I imagined we'd be doing in the bathroom together."

Adriel didn't _want _to know what he meant by that. He smirked at himself, but it was a halfhearted attempt that soon turned into a grimace. She noticed some gross barf sitting on the side of his mouth, and she self-consciously wiped her own face clear of any stray chunks.

It only took a few moments more for her to gain the ability to walk again. The smell of their vomit mixed in the toilet bowl and produced a repulsive scent, and someone needed to flush it down. That was all the motivation she needed to stand up and do what needed to be done. She walked out of the bathroom and straight back to James' bed to lie down on top of the blankets and covered her head with a pillow.

"Have a pleasant awakening, Adriel?" James' voice asked from across the room. He sounded very tired, and for a moment, Adriel wondered whether he was an insomniac or if he simply refused to sleep. Then _what _he had said registered in her mind, so she lifted her arm up and feebly flipped him the bird. He chuckled in response, a deep and abrupt noise that died almost as soon as it came out. She made a mental note to herself to never make him laugh again.

* * *

><p>James had left, but Allen remained in the room. He was fast asleep by the time Adriel felt well enough to even stand up. She made some coffee with the brewer in the room to try to get the motivation to go out and kill. Oh yeah. That was something she still had to do, and it had to be done <em>today<em>.

The coffee sucked, but it did its job. She took a quick, much-needed shower, grabbed her jacket, and was able to go back out onto the streets of Venice with only a little bit of nausea and a light pound in her head. It must have been early afternoon since there was a decent amount of people around and the sun was very high and bright in the sky. Only a few wisps of clouds dotted here and there across the atmosphere smudged the perfect blue.

Adriel thought it was going to be hard to find Feliciano—another failed day that could possibly result in her death. She doubted it but the threat was still there. Surprisingly, though, she found Feliciano with ease within an hour or two of searching.

Rather, Feliciano found _her. _He was hanging out with Ludwig and Kiku, as usual, but when he saw Adriel, he managed to ditch them. He still remembered his dinner promise he made to her a few days ago, and he wasn't going to let the chance slip by now that he had some money to pay for the meal.

He tapped her on the shoulder, and she nearly flipped out when she saw him. He wasn't wearing a mask today, and she thought it was Luciano, but he greeted her in Italian with a smile that Luciano wouldn't be able to give. So she calmed herself down, grinning both at Feliciano and the opportunity fate dangled in front of her face. She said hello.

"I have some money today," he announced. "I can take you out to lunch if you want me to."

He was happy to see her. No one ever seemed happy to see her. She guessed somewhere in her heart she knew she wasn't really looking for him to kill him. She genuinely just wanted to talk to him again. And so, all previous intents of murder (however few there were) rocketed out of her mind and landed somewhere in the canal to drown. "Yes, I was looking forward to that."

They walked to the nearest restaurant. Ludwig made a move towards them to get Felciano, but Kiku stopped him. "Let them go," he said. Ludwig hesitated but managed to turn around and go the other way with Kiku.

Feliciano brought Adriel to a little restaurant that was a lot less chic than the one James had brought her to, but it was very pretty and laid back. There was almost an absence of elegance; it had a more comfortable, almost homey look. Everything from the exterior design to the table placement to the way the silverware was set had a family vibe to it. Even the other diners were large families and elderly couples. Adriel made a mental note to _not _get drunk this time around.

He told her a bunch of stories about him and his friends. He met Ludwig when he hid in a box of tomatoes and pretended to be the "Box of Tomatoes Fairy" to try to get him to go away. And during their training once, he found a cat and started playing with it, but Ludwig didn't appreciate his slacking off. She was such a cute cat… even when she almost jeopardized their mission on an alien spaceship by scratching up Ludwig's face while they were crawling through an air duct.

His stories ranged from cute and adorable to crazy and unbelievable. He had Adriel laughing nearly the whole meal. And the way he told the stories was so intriguing, too. He recalled them as if they happened over fifty years ago, but he couldn't have been any more than twenty years old.

Adriel wished she had some kind of funny story she could tell him, too, but Before had yet to really open up in her mind. Her amnesia didn't seem like an appropriate topic to discuss with a near-stranger, so she happily listened to his fun tales and laughed along.

The spaghetti Feliciano ordered for her was absolutely amazing. He could really go on and on talking about pasta, and Adriel didn't mind when the conversation dipped down that path. She would probably never be as enthusiastic about any food as she was right then discussing pasta with Feliciano.


	14. Exploring Italy

Chapter Fourteen: Exploring Italy

Luciano did not give a damn about what Adriel was doing. At the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was Feliciano's death. Of course, he probably wouldn't have suspected his little hostage to be on a _date_ with her assassination target.

Then again, he didn't really put much thought into anything, especially once he was home again. He hadn't been there in at least three years—not since he had gone to America with his brother in search of the infamous Lady Specter, although his brother chickened out of the mission and went back to Rome a few months in. Luciano suspected it was because Lutz and Kuro had joined their cause, and his brother was afraid of them. Of course, he denied it, but he couldn't pull anything over Luciano's eyes.

The actual point for being in Venice during carnival was usually lost to Luciano during his stay. In the midst of his partying and carrying on, reasoning was swept up under a carpet and hidden from sight. He couldn't think of a better time to let loose than right now. There was absolutely _no_ better time to get drunk, have sex, and cause as much mischief as he and his friends could.

He celebrated carnival, too, but in a cynical way, as though he were forced by his mother to against his will. He wore an unremarkable mask with a very plain outfit during the daytime, his shoulders slumped as he walked along the streets of his home city. But even if the whole celebration wasn't his forte, he still felt better, more alive, at home.

The final day of his vacation came and went like it was nothing. To the universe, he guessed, it really _was _nothing. His fleeting comfort and joy wouldn't make the Earth turn any slower. The day would come and go like it had been every day before and every day since. He understood that, so he treated the day like it was no big deal. He walked around Venice casually, almost saying goodbye with unspoken words to the city he knew so well.

If only he'd realize his personal high hopes in Lady Specter's skills wouldn't make fate bend to his will. Fate was like the Earth in that respect; neither was concerned about Luciano's internal feelings and opinions.

So, while he held doubt that Lady Specter would be able to complete her mission and successfully assassinate his wretched counterpart, he also couldn't fathom her turning against them and going on a date with Feliciano. The possibility, unsurprisingly, never crossed his mind.

* * *

><p>After lunch, Feliciano made a point to show Adriel the best places in Venice. He took her through the crowds and excitedly showed her places like the iconic buildings in and around St. Mark's Square just off the Grand Canal.<p>

There were crazy amounts of people around, but they managed to get inside the Doge's Palace in one piece. Feliciano explained how the building was built in two phases since the original architect was executed for treason after construction began, and it took over a hundred years to finally complete the other half. The outside was very rectangular and white, sporting two rows of columns along the outside and a row of arched windows at the top.

Before they entered the palace, three statues welcomed them inside. Two very nude men stood on either side of the top of the stairs. The one on the left wore a helmet of some sort and held the end of a blanket up to his crotch. The one on the right flaunted a gnarly beard and stood over a ball of some sort. Above the arch at the top of the stairs, a lion with wings stared out into the distance beyond them. Adriel was too uncultured to even pretend to know what they were supposed to be. Feliciano explained that they were the gods Mars and Neptune.

Inside, their eyes were dragged around by beauty of the surrounding artwork. Everything was intricate and carefully thought through, and it all held an ornate feeling of richness behind it. Adriel loved the artistic intrigue of the whole place, and Feliciano loved the look of excitement that lit up her face.

Next door to the Doge's Palace was St. Mark's Campanile, a plain brick bell tower topped with a statue of the Angel Gabriel. Feliciano insisted that the view from the top of the tower was too breathtaking for anyone visiting Venice to _not _see, so they took the lift up. He talked briskly about being able to see as far as the Alps on a clear day.

The weather did not cooperate with them, but the amazing bird's-eye-view of the buildings of Venice were enough the satisfy Adriel. Still, Feliciano seemed unreasonably upset by the circumstance, sighing and frowning. She suddenly felt the responsibility to make her guide feel better; after all, he _was_ taking her on a tour of Venice. So she grabbed his hand and gave it a little squeeze, telling him, "You know, the only reason this 'vacation' of mine doesn't totally suck is because you're here."

She neglected to tell him that she was only here _because _of him. It wasn't really his fault, after all.

He stared at her for a while, unsure of how to respond. She looked out over the city again. Some other people pushed their way to the edge to get a good look at the city themselves, but his hand was still in hers, and neither felt the need to move them.

Behind the Doge's Palace was St. Mark's Basilica, and it was an absolutely gorgeous piece of architecture. The church shone more like a beautiful white castle in the setting sun than a house of worship. Paintings displaying righteous scenes stood up high in the very front, and magnificent domes topped with crosses arose behind. Adriel would have loved to have seen the inside, but there were a lot of people also trying to get in. They ended up not seeing the presumably beautiful interior, but even just seeing the outside of the building was enough to satisfy any tourist.

Feliciano paid for two gelatos at sundown. He licked his ice cream once before he dramatically gasped. "Adriel, we didn't even go on a gondola ride! What's the point in vacationing in Venice without taking a gondola ride?!" With that, he whisked her to the canal once more and found a gondolier.

Before she could even blink they were serenely gliding along a small waterway off the Grand Canal. The setting sun in the distance painted streaks of warm colors across the sky and settled a content feeling in the pit of Adriel's stomach. She found herself snuggled up next to Feliciano, and his arm wrapped itself around her shoulders. He was smiling like an idiot, and when he looked over at her and saw her catch it, his face erupted into crimson. He tried to play it off, which made her grin, and they stared at each other a long time just smiling.

Suddenly, he asked, "Will, I be able to see you again tomorrow?"

She took a deep breath, and both of their grins fell off their faces. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning. I don't think so."

"Oh…" He looked over at the buildings as they drifted by. She looked down at the bottom of the boat. Something heavy had fallen between them, and she feared it would ruin their friendship. But what was it? Anxiety? Irritation? Disappointment? She couldn't quite determine it.

They approached St. Mark's Square again, but this time it was way above their heads, and the Grand Canal was visible just a little ways down the road. A short bridge connected the two parts of the square. Little heads had been carved out of small bulbs along the bottom. It was pretty cool. Feliciano noticed her observing it, so he explained what it was.

"It's called the 'Bridge of Sighs.' Some people say it got its name when prisoners would walk across it on their way to the executioner and sigh. I like the theory that says it's called the Bridge of Sighs because any couple that kisses under it will be… overwhelmed with the romance of it all… and have to sigh…"

They had found each other's eyes, and his thoughts trailed off watching her. It was weird for her; she felt like she hadn't seen Feliciano's adorable amber eyes the entire time she was with him, until now.

Neither of them was sure who started it, but their lips met and didn't separate for a long time. Adriel wrapped her arms around his neck, and he awkwardly kept his at his sides for a little bit. Something must clicked in his mind when she ran her fingers through his hair, though, because he locked his arms around her waist and gently brought her closer. It was slow and passionate and neither of them could have asked for more.

And just as Luciano couldn't have guessed Lady Specter would be out on a date with her assigned target, Adriel was oblivious to her captor watching her make out with his enemy.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I'm sorry about the crappy descriptions. Look up pictures of the different buildings on Google to know what they really look like. St. Mark's Basilica is really a beautiful building, and the Bridge of Sighs is also very interesting. The Doge's Palace has some awesome interior art, and you can find some really breathtaking images of Venice from the top of St. Mark's Campanile.<p> 


	15. There Are No Secrets

Chapter Fifteen: There Are No Secrets

St. Mark's Square never really impressed Luciano. Countless groups of tourists flocked there every year, and carnival only attracted more people. But it was one of those places one _had _to visit on a vacation. Besides, getting obnoxiously drunk was something he could do in America, too, but he couldn't see St. Mark's Basilica or the Doge's Palace from their crappy house in New York State.

He looked at the basilica and tried to get an appreciation down for it. It was a part of his heritage, after all, and it was recognized as one of the best examples of Byzantine architecture.

Ah, who was he kidding? It was just an old church. Why should he care about it?

Lutz and Kuro stood on either side of him, also staring up at the church and taking in its "magnificence." Neither one of them were all that impressed either, of course. After all, both of their countries had its own grand examples of architecture, so why should they care about some Italian church? Luciano nodded at what he believed to be their unspoken thoughts and faced away from the stupid building.

In reality, Lutz and Kuro didn't care about the building enough to decipher whether or not they were impressed by it. They were tired of being in Italy and were itching to bring the mission to their own homes once it was executed here. Their true thoughts did not reflect Luciano's beliefs. Lutz thought over how he could stash some beer on the plane without having it confiscated by security first, and Kuro daydreamed about getting back to his new video game.

Nevertheless, Luciano led them away from the basilica and through the Doge's Palace. Unlike Adriel and Feliciano, however, they did not stop to take a look at the art inside. They walked straight through the courtyard in silence with their hands in their pockets.

There seemed to be so much they should discuss about the mission, and what better place to talk than in the open privacy of an outdoor crowd? Despite this, no one said anything, and the silence felt wrong. Luciano couldn't take the buildup of thoughts anymore. "I'm going to head back to the hotel and pack. How about you two?"

Kuro nodded. "That was my plan, too." Lutz grunted in agreement.

They were past the Doge's Palace at this point, and the Bridge of Sighs was just steps away. None of them knew the name of this bridge; they didn't consider it significant enough for a title. Below, meanwhile, a particular Italian rival explained the meaning of this bridge to an assassin who should have completed her job by now.

Luciano took a step onto the bridge, a seemingly insignificant action that might just change everything. "Our time in Venice went by too fast," he complained.

"Yeah…" Lutz grumbled. It was hard to tell whether he meant it or not, though.

Kuro ignored the statement altogether. "Do you think Lady Specter has actually completed her task?" he inquired.

"She better have, or she won't be around for much longer," Luciano growled.

"I don't like to admit it," Lutz stated gruffly, "but I don't think we got the right person. Don't you think Lady Specter would have taken her target out by now?"

Luciano stopped walking in the middle of the bridge and looked into the direction of the Grand Canal. "We _couldn't _have been wrong. We put too much work into finding her to _be_ wrong. She is her, whether she appears to be or not." A gondola had passed under the bridge below them and just started to emerge out the other side. There were some familiar people in the boat, but he didn't take notice of them. "I have a feeling she's just been messing with us up until now, anyways."

"I don't know, Vargas," Lutz said. There was apprehension in his voice, which put Luciano on edge. He clenched his fists.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

Lutz pointed down into the canal. Luciano's eyes followed the invisible line his finger drew to the couple eating each other's faces in the gondola. He didn't get it at first. What did Lutz' perversions have to do with the validity of their captive? But then he noticed the familiar brown hair, short and unremarkable, that belonged to Lady Specter. So _this _was how she'd been spending her time? No wonder Feliciano was still breathing.

Then the couple broke apart and smiled at each other, and Luciano saw the face he knew all too well—his own face, but much more stupid-looking. The face of Feliciano.

Luciano could barely contain his fury, and his body shook with the recognition of what was going on. He wanted to jump into the boat and slice both of their throats open, but he knew revealing his presence in Italy would send a whole flank of first players after him, and he didn't want to have to deal with that. Instead, he spun on his heel and walked briskly in the direction of their hotel.

"La cagna is in for a world of pain once she gets back," he grumbled under his breath.

* * *

><p>Feliciano jumped out of the gondola first, so he could help Adriel get out. He was suddenly very enthusiastic after they shared their kiss, and Adriel felt just as eager. But the sun was starting to go down now, and she had already taken up enough of his time and money. It was time for them to part ways, or else she might just use up all his hospitality.<p>

"Thanks for… everything, Feliciano," she said, a bit of sadness held in her tone.

When he looked at her again, all the happiness had drained from his face. "You're not planning to leave now, are you?"

She sighed, deep and long. "I… kind of have to." They might come looking for her should she stay any longer, and she really didn't want any harm coming to him. It was kind of ironic considering the only reason she met him was because she was supposed to kill him.

"Oh…" His gaze became very interested in the road at his feet. "You'll at least call me some time, right? You still have my number?"

The piece of paper felt like a hot rock in her shoe. If only she had any access to a phone. "Yeah…" She doubted she'd ever talk to him again, but she couldn't bear to see him any sadder. "I'll definitely call you."

They said goodbye, and Adriel headed back to the hotel, confident she'd get away with 'losing' Feliciano. They wouldn't suspect anything happened.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: "La cagna" is supposed to be Italian for "the bitch".<p> 


	16. Punishment

Chapter Sixteen: Punishment

When she reached the rooms, Adriel knocked on James' side. To her surprise, it was Luciano who opened the door, and he looked extremely pissed off. Maybe he burned his spaghetti or something. He scowled at her with his arms crossed before he asked, "How did it go?"

Adriel sighed. It didn't look like he would let her in until his interrogation was over. "Um, about that…" Her voice trailed off.

"You better tell me the goddamn truth," he warned. His jaw was clenched, and there was a murderous glare in his eyes. A piece of Adriel's soul may have died just from seeing him look at her this way. But she knew a lie would be the only thing that could spare her life and her dignity.

She braced herself for a beating. "I looked for days straight, but I just couldn't find him again."

Luciano gripped the hair on the top of her head and threw her into the room. He made sure to lock the door as Adriel picked herself up off the ground. She expected to see James or Allen or even Kuro in the room that was theirs, but the only clues to their previous inhabitation were their old, worn suitcases on their beds. The door connecting the two rooms was closed and also locked, and Adriel got the impression they were hanging out just next door while Luciano handled his business in here.

"I guess you're too stupid to get this through your thick skull, but I really _hate _liars." He swung his fist towards her face, and she blocked it using the basic skills Kuro had taught her a week ago. That made him even _angrier_. He went for another punch to her face with ten times more strength, and hit his mark. She crumbled to the floor in a heap, cradling her eye.

He took this chance to crouch down over her and clamp his hands around her neck. She tried to pry his hands off and resupply the flow of oxygen throughout her body, but they wouldn't come loose. She thrashed her legs around, trying to throw him off, but his rage made him strong. She was too weak with the lack of air to continue resisting and saw black spots dance in front of her vision. The looming ghost of doom had come to pay her a visit.

The grasp on her windpipe loosened, and sweet oxygen rushed into her lungs like kids to an ice cream truck on a hot summer's day. She was still too weak to move too much when she felt Luciano lift her body up by her armpits and into the desk chair. He pulled her arms behind her back and secured a rope around them and the back of the seat. Then he fastened her feet to the legs. Once she had fully regained her composure, she couldn't move. He had definitely done this before.

"So," he started coolly, "Would you like to tell me the truth now?" He brandished a knife around with a horrifying scowl on his face.

Adriel tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. She had a decision to make; should she hold onto the lie or let it burn up in flames? She didn't know how much Luciano really knew and doubted the extent of his knowledge, and the lies would provide some kind of excuse. So she went with it. "I—I don't know what you mean…"

He pressed the cool blade threateningly against her neck. "Oh, Lady Liar, if only you weren't so dumb. Do you need me to help you remember what happened earlier today?" His smirk reappeared on his face. "It would be my pleasure."

She started screaming. She couldn't think of anything else to do. He gave her a quick punch to the gut that told her to shut up and then grabbed some duct tape off the desk. "It could have been so much easier for you if you weren't such a stubborn bitch," he said as he taped up her mouth. "I saw you making out with Feliciano. I believe my instructions were to _kill him_, not _fornicate_ with him!"

He slapped her cheek, and the sting engulfed her face like a burning fire. She blinked back her tears and her pain; she could not give him the satisfaction of making her cry. She had done nothing wrong. _He _was the one who needed to be beaten. _He _was the one who wanted Feliciano dead in the first place. Why did he have to get _her_ wrapped up in it?

When Adriel gained enough courage to look at Luciano again, he was rubbing the lower part of his blade between his index finger and thumb. She couldn't control the glare in her eyes, and he grinned at the rage in her expression. "I cannot have a traitorous slut as my assassin, now can I? It looks like I'll have to give you some punishment for breaking the rules."

Disfigurement seemed to be his favorite form of torture. He held an iron grip on Adriel's hair and warned her not to move or he may mess up and slit her throat. He didn't seem too concerned about it either way, so she refrained from moving any muscle. Using his other hand, he sliced vertical lines down her neck just hard enough for it to hurt but not kill and making a point to avoid her windpipe. "Just think of it as a necklace made out of your own blood," he commented.

He stepped away for a moment and examined his work. Adriel tried to drop her head down, but the wounds would not allow her the comfort. Tears sprung up behind her eyes again, but she pushed the idea of crying away. Luciano's hideous face filled her vision. She didn't know what he'd do next.

"Here, let me give you some matching earrings." He twirled the blade into her ear lobe, twisting out the inside of the flap of skin. The sound made her want to throw up—it just made Luciano smile wider. Adriel honestly never thought Luciano could look so delighted, but she guessed that was how torture could make a psychopath feel. He was playing God and determining the level of pain and mercy she would go through, and all she could do was take it.

He moved onto her right ear, but for whatever terrible reason, he decided to just cut her lobe right off. It was a short, unexpected slice that made her wince. He dangled the piece of skin in front of her face, and she just prayed he wouldn't make her eat it. He didn't. But he looked very disappointed in her for something. "Come on, cagna," he whined. "Won't you bawl like the bratty girl you are?" A moment of silence passed, and he shrugged. "Guess I'll have to try something else then."

He walked around behind her back and out of her field of vision. She took a deep breath, trying to relax herself. It freaked her out that she couldn't see what he was doing, but she knew exactly what it was when she felt terrible pain worse than anything he had done so far. Losing a finger certainly wasn't a walk in the park.

The knife slid through the base of her left pinky finger easier than she would have thought beforehand, and the pain was far greater than she would have expected. She uttered a single drawn-out curse word that was indecipherable behind the duct tape. But she squeezed her eyelids shut tight and withheld her tears. She breathed through her nose deeply and bit down hard on her bottom lip, trying with all her might to keep calm.

He stood up and walked back around to her front. He wiggled her pinky in front of her face. It was weird to see; her hands tied tightly behind her back but her finger unattached and in her face. It looked slender and fresh, like it was a part of some invisible person.

She still wouldn't allow herself to shed tears and instead dealt with the pain by releasing a high-pitched, hum-like scream through her nose. The frown on Luciano's face turn into a fit of fury before he punched in the temple and knocked her out cold.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: So that was a bit gory. I would say I'm sorry, but this <em>is <em>a 2p Hetalia story after all, so I hope it wasn't too random and surprising. I have no idea how much any of this would hurt, but I have a low tolerance for pain, so this is how I guess it would be.


	17. Traitorous Scum

Chapter Seventeen: Traitorous Scum

Luciano stormed into the connected room after he finished his business with Adriel. He eHe ordered Allen, James, and Kuro to stop her bleeding and clean up the room. He didn't want to leave too many blood stains on the floor when they left or someone might get suspicious. Then he and Lutz exited the hotel for who-knows-where.

Kuro didn't move from his seat. He expected one of the other two to deal with the scum while he read his manga in peace. The brothers, meanwhile, peered into the room, curious to see what Luciano had done. They were expecting to see her guts dangling from the ceiling fan or something, so they were very surprised to find her body perfectly intact and alive. They guessed Luciano still had plans for her after her traitorous failure. At least the clean-up would be easy.

Allen went around to untie her hands while James bent down to untie her ankles. "Hey man," Allen said before he even started taking out the knot, "Noodle-Ass cut off her finger and just left it on the floor over here."

James face-palmed. "You make the worst fucking nicknames ever," he stated.

"I know." Her arms fell limply to her sides as Allen stood up, holding the rope.

James glanced up at him before he moved on the Adriel's other ankle. "I dare you to eat the finger," he said.

"Hell no," Allen replied. "You know I'm a vegetarian."

James stood up next to his brother and examined Adriel. "I'll take care of her hand. You put band-aids on her ears and clean up her neck." They set to work patching her up and then pushed her over to the desk. They weren't exactly careful, either, haphazardly wrapping the dampened gauze and sticking a band aid halfway off one of her ears, but at least they helped stop the bleeding.

Adriel's body fell forward, and her head hit the desk in front of her. Allen almost pooped his pants laughing, but James slumped down onto his bed without a care and took out a cigarette. Once Allen calmed down, he looked at her again and noticed something. "Should I take that jacket off of her and throw it away? It's got blood all over it."

She had worn that jacket ever since Luciano took it from one of his old victims and gave it to her, and now it was stained on the chest and at the wrists with her own blood. James sighed at Allen. "Yeah, I guess. She can't wear it in public like that. It would draw unnecessary attention to us."

Allen nodded. "That's what I was thinking." He moved her so that she leaned against the back of the chair instead of awkwardly against the desktop, then unzipped her jacket and threw it into the other room. Kuro could deal with it.

James figured his brother would turn on the TV, come over to his bed, and fall asleep watching it. Then he'd be able to look up cute animal videos on YouTube without the annoyance of Allen's ridicule. But Allen didn't do what James had suspected.

Instead, he remained standing in front of Adriel, his hands out in front of him and a disgusting smile on his face. "She's got a pretty nice rack, man."

"You're a goddamn pig."

Allen chuckled but ignored him. "I guess you would already know that, huh? Since you already fucked her and everything."

"You're fucking delusional," James muttered, though he doubted Allen even knew what that word meant. He pulled out his phone and started playing Candy Crush.

The light of the TV flickered through the room before Allen plopped down on the other bed. He watched the TV, seemingly pacified, until the gears in his head started turning and a smirk stretched across his face. James knew what that look was and prepared for the oncoming insult that Allen thought was clever but wasn't really. "You must _suck _at sex. After all, she turned to pasty little Feliciano of all people for the good time you didn't give her."

"Will you get off that already?" James barked.

Allen blatantly ignored him. "You left your socks on, didn't you? Or, better yet, you got up after you were done and put your clothes back on before she fell asleep, right? No wonder she was disappointed. It's weird that she wouldn't just come to the more experienced brother, though. Her loss."

"She's fucking traitorous scum, so if you want to sleep with her, I don't give a shit!" James shouted. He had lost his cool at this point. A fight was imminent. "That's your type of girl, anyway!"

James had pulled out his hockey stick with the barbed wire on it, prepared to beat this shit out of his punk of a brother. Once he saw this, Allen grabbed his baseball bat, determined to show his brother he wasn't one to be messed with. They simultaneously stood up from their beds and sized each other up.

The fight was interrupted when the traitorous scum finally woke up.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Writing dialogue between Allen and James is so much fun, haha.<p> 


	18. Wounded

Chapter Eighteen: Wounded

Adriel had woken up with a throb almost everywhere; her face, her head, her neck, her ears, and _especially_ her hand. There were two people in the room that she immediately registered. Neither of them were Luciano, thank God. They stood next to each other between the beds and animatedly discussed something. The sound of their voices reached her ears, but her brain could not form words out of them. They had to be Allen and James.

It was then she realized she was still sitting in that terrible desk chair. She had been moved from the middle of the room to the desk, and she was now freed from the ropes. She rubbed her eye and sat up straight, enjoying the liberation. The two grimaced at her when they realized she was awake, and their conversation died. Adriel looked down at her lap hoping to appear less guilty in their eyes, and found the reminder of all her pain.

Her hand sat on her thigh. It had been wrapped up with gauze and ice, and the bleeding had stopped. She rubbed the holes in her ear lobes and found bandages in the places they had been mutilated. Then she lightly touched her neck, feeling a sticky substance on her cuts. Neosporin?

She looked up at Allen and James, ignoring their terrifying accusatory stares. Had they been the ones to patch her up? For a couple of psycho killers, they were turning out to be pretty kind people. Better than Luciano, at least. In a fit of her own insanity, she _almost_ got up, hugged them, and showered them in gratitude. But she knew that would be very unwise considering all the hate they were staring her down with.

James must have caught himself expressing so much hate and anger in his face since he let out a breath and ran his fingers through his hair. His usual unbothered, stoic expression reemerged. "Adriel, we're flying back today. You have to go wash yourself off so that no one gets suspicious." He rummaged through his suitcase for a moment, and then threw some clothes at her. "You can wear those."

Her mind must not have been working right again because she complied without even asking where her jacket went. She must have triple-checked that the bathroom door was locked. She certainly did not want any surprise visitors while she took a shower, and she wouldn't put that low move past Allen.

She opened the toilet lid, preparing to take a long, much-needed piss, when the mirror caught her attention. Well, not the mirror, but the girl _in_ the mirror. That is, her own reflection peaked her curiosity enough to put off her potty break for a couple of moments.

Her right eye held deep shades of black and blue, and it was glaringly obvious on her pale face. She touched it with her hand tenderly, but even that slight contact made her hiss and flinch in pain. She moved her observation to her deformed earlobes next. She couldn't bear to see the wound on her right ear sticking out from the under the misplaced band-aid, so she bit down on her bottom lip and adjusted the bandage to cover it right. The thin vertical slices down her neck had begun to itch in their healing state, but she didn't want to scratch them for fear of removing the Neosporin that had been rubbed over them by careless hands.

But none of these were as life-changing and painful as her missing pinky finger. She stared at the mutilated hand for a long time, repeating over and over in her mind, "I'm missing a finger." It may have been a small, pretty useless piece of her body, but the idea of losing it had never crossed her mind before. It was agonizingly tender, and she feared it'd never fully heal.

Eventually, she got over looking at her new disfigurement and set to cleaning business. She made sure she was quick and only washed her hair and body with the tiny bottles provided by the hotel. She paid special attention to getting the dried blood out of her knotted hair while making sure no water touched her wrapped hand.

The shower really did help her mood. It both woke her up and cleansed her body, so she wasn't feeling like complete shit anymore. She was closer to three-quarters shit now.

She put on the same bra and underwear she had worn for weeks since she didn't exactly have an alternative option, but she did take advantage of James' gift and wore his clothes. He had given her a blue plaid shirt and baggy jeans that were much too long for her, but she couldn't complain. It's not like the clothes were new, after all she could feel how worn they were, but it felt so nice to change clothes that she didn't mind. She cuffed the pant legs and dealt with his clothes.

She had to comb through her wet hair with her fingers, practically pulling apart the thickest knots with brute strength alone. At least her brown hair fell only to just above her shoulders—less weight and knots to have to finger through.

When she finally left the bathroom, she found Allen asleep in his bed and snoring up a storm and James sitting in the desk chair, half-watching the TV and texting someone on his phone. He glared at Adriel when the light from the bathroom ate up the darkness of the rest of the room. It was pitch black outside—the clock on the nightstand between the beds told everyone that it was 2:33 am. Definitely a good time to be sleeping.

"You're finally out. Took you long enough," James commented, standing up and pushing her out of the way. "I really need to take a piss, so thanks for making me wait." He slammed the door shut in her face.

She didn't feel like doing anything, not that she really had anything to do, so she just sat down in the desk chair and let her mind loose. That was probably a bad move, for she ended up reliving the torture and mentally feeling the pain all over again. She didn't want to, but she had nothing to distract her with.

* * *

><p>She remembered the peace she had experienced on the plane ride into Italy a week ago. She sat too far from any of her captors to feel threatened by them. Allen had sat behind her, but he was more of a nuisance than anything else. As she, Allen, James, and Kuro drove in a taxicab up to the airport, she silently prayed for some kind of distance like that in the hours she had to spend on the plane again.<p>

Fate was not so kind that day. Sure, Luciano and Ludwig (whom they had met up with at the air port) sat a dozen seats behind her and Allen and James were who-knows-where, but Kuro took up the seat next to her in the second row. Even worse, she was in the window seat, so she could not run away down the aisle should he try something.

Adriel leaned her head against the chair and gazed out the window. There was something so calming about watching the clouds drift by that she found her eyelids drooping shut and the idea of sleep appearing in her mind. She almost forgot where she was and who was around her.

There was a light poke at her black eye that made her eyelids pop right open and a long, sharp hiss escape her. She faced Kuro, covering her bruised eye, and asked, "What was that for?"

His expression remained impassive as he watched her. "What's your real name?" His eyes slid from her with disinterest and landed on the passing clouds out the window.

"A-Adriel Short," she answered.

He hummed in understanding. "And you were in the US Army, correct?"

She squinted at him suspiciously. "I think so? I still have amnesia, so—"

"Yes, I know," he cut her off. "You must have learned how to put together and shoot that rifle because of your previous experience in combat. But after yesterday's events, I think it's safe to assume you are not truly Lady Specter. Of course, I knew that all along. You have too soft of heart to be an assassin."

Adriel didn't know what to say to that, so she gazed back out the windows. Kuro had told her all he wanted to say, so he pulled out a 3DS and began playing some Japanese role-playing game. Meanwhile, Adriel tried to avoid thinking about what her captors would do with her once they all agreed they did not need her anymore.


	19. Back to the USA

Chapter Nineteen: Back to the USA

They sat around their small living room, discussing their recent failed mission and cursing the deceitful liar who was now locked up in a cage in their basement. Luciano and Lutz sat on the broken orange couch in the middle of the room, Luciano speaking so adamantly his spit fell upon Lutz' face, who wiped it off with a low grunt of discuss.

Allen leaned against the wall with his arms crossed while James sat on the floor comfortably with his legs stretched out. They both could care less about what Luciano had to say at the moment and instead watched the crappy show on their crappy TV at the moment—_Supernatural_. At least it had a decent amount of gore in it.

Oliver, however, listened intently to what Luciano said about their trip. He wasn't able to go since _someone_ had to hold down the fort, and it was his turn (again), so he just made as many cakes as he could. And now he wanted to know about just how traitorous Lady Specter—oops, _ex_-Lady Specter—turned out to be. He nodded at Luciano's storytelling and bit into cupcake after cupcake.

They speculated Kuro was on his laptop in his room upstairs, not caring about the mission and instead watching tentacle porn or something. In reality, he was bringing up his previous research he had done on finding the real Lady Specter. They should have let him do the research in the first place. Luciano and Lutz could barely handle tying their own shoes let alone discovering the assassin even the FBI had given up on finding. But Kuro could handle it, and he actually did find her—the true Lady Specter.

He cradled his laptop in his arm as he marched down the stairs and through the hall to the living room, bringing the information down to the rest of them. Luciano turned around when he heard him come in. "Do you have any input, Kuro?" he asked.

"Hai," he responded. "I have found the real Lady Specter." They all give him an incredulous look. "Allow me to show you." He sat down between Luciano and Lutz, placing his laptop on his legs. He showed them where she lived now (in a small town in Pennsylvania), how he found her (through various files that contained a similar strand of names), and even her profile page on Facebook. Kuro would make one hell of a stalker.

They made plans for him, Luciano, and Lutz to head to her house to pick her up early next week. There were things that needed to be done before then. A new test needed to be built. Kuro and Lutz could do that. A flight needed to be booked for three Thursdays from now to Japan. Allen and James could do that. And all those goddamn cupcakes needed to be cleaned up. Oliver could do that. But most importantly, their little pest needed to be taken care of. Luciano put himself in charge of that.

He daydreamed about the torture he'd put her through. "I'll pull her eyes and tongue out first, and then I'll cut her ears off. That way, the only sense she'll have left is touch. Then she'll only be able to focus on the feeling as I slice open her stomach and pull her intestines out one by one." He laughed maniacally, eager for the kill.

If there was any sane person in the room, they would have called up the police and had him taken away to an asylum for such a threat. But the rest of the crazy housemates just laughed along with him, except for one.

Once the laughter died down, James stood up. "I don't know guys… I don't think we should kill her." They all looked at him with varying degrees of are-you-fucking-stupid? "I mean, we could just sustain her enough in case we need her in the future." He had no idea why he was saying this. "Or, you know, we could keep her around to… vent our frustrations out on or something."

Somewhere deep inside him, he knew she wasn't all that bad. And it was kind of _their _fault for getting the wrong girl. The least they could do to apologize was let her live, even if they couldn't let her leave with all the information she knew about their plan.

"You know what," Luciano started. "I actually like that idea. I—we could have our own living punching bag and she would stay conveniently in our basement. It's payback that's even worse than death."

They all nodded and agreed, and James wondered whether he just saved Adriel from a terrible death or condemned her to an even worse life. Why did he even care anyway? She was a traitor. She was a liar. She deserved to die. But, somehow, he knew that she didn't. She was different than the other people. She innocently wandered along her life without even knowing what she did in her past. She had a clean slate that they threw in the mud and dirtied. No wonder she kissed Feliciano instead of killing him like she was supposed to. He didn't force her to assassinate others against her will.

Everyone else stood up, satisfied with today's decisions. They were probably going to go do whatever and waste the rest of the day away. James, however, remained on the floor and pulled out a cigarette. He let his focus turn from the thoughts in his head to the show on TV. One protagonist brother told the other protagonist brother that he loved him so much he'd go to hell for him or some shit. James didn't care.

* * *

><p>Oliver had come to the airport to pick them up in the same black van they had used to kidnap Adriel two or so weeks ago. No one spoke on the ride back to the house, but Luciano did flicker through the radio channels and complained about the crappy music (most of which Allen bobbed his head to).<p>

The moment they pulled into the driveway, Luciano ordered Kuro and Lutz to drag her out of the van. It was so sudden that she barely had time to start struggling until they got inside. But the two men were stronger than she anticipated and were able to keep a grip on her. Once they got to the top of the stairs, they threw her down and laughed as she tumbled to the basement floor below before following her.

She battered up pretty good from everything by now, both physically and emotionally. She knew they were going to kill her. She just wished they'd get it over with already! Why did they have to hurt her over and over? Why couldn't they just leave her alone?!

There were two cages and what looked like an old furnace in the room, only slightly visible due to the light from the open door above. The cage rung a choir of metal contact as they threw her into it and slammed the door shut. It was chain-link and stretched all the way up to the ceiling. In one corner stood a gross, rusty bucket she speculated was meant for bathroom duties.

At least there was enough room for her to lie down should she feel tired, though she hoped she wouldn't need to. There was an ominous dark liquid spilled across the floor, and she could only hope it was red paint. The smell of death made it pretty obvious it was not paint, though.

Once they shut the door up the stairs, there was no way to see _anything_, but at least it matched her mood. Her life had become nothing but darkness since she was too stubborn and arrogant to admit she couldn't handle the situation.

"Well, I'm admitting it now!" she shrieked. "I can't handle any of it!" She plopped down in frustration onto her bum and finally let the tears that had been threatening to fall for the past week go.

Oliver was the one who came down to tell her that her life would be spared in exchange for her service as a public punching bag. Then he offered her a cupcake that he pushed through a little flap on the lower part of the chain-link door and left.

Adriel stared at the cupcake for a while, finding herself growing angrier and angrier at its pink frosting and sky blue sprinkles. She kicked the little baked treat, and it bounced off the other side of the cage and landed frosting-first on the dirty floor. She sat down again, buried her head into her hands, and bawled once more.


	20. Fear, Terror, and Torture

Chapter Twenty: Fear, Terror, and Torture

Over the week Adriel had been deemed as the punching bag, fear had become commonplace in her emotional range. She would never admit it to anyone, of course. She had never been all that afraid of anything in her life, not even death. She _hated_ fear. But after these psychopaths decided she was only as good as a punching bag, there was no telling what she could expect.

She may have hated the fear, but she _despised _the terror. She thought about it—she thought a lot, actually. The fear she experienced came from never knowing, but the terror came from always guessing. Had the door creaked open? Was someone coming down? Was it Allen, or worse Luciano, come to take out their boredom on their unfortunate hostage? Or was it just her imagination? It seemed her imagination also enjoyed her suffering and would never shut up about what could possibly be going on.

Besides the cupcake instance with Oliver, they had left her alone the first day. She made a weak prediction that they'd kind of forget she was down there and let her starve to death. At least then she wouldn't have to see any of their faces again. This prediction, needless to say, was wrong.

One the second day, Allen came down the stairs. He made sure to shut the door behind him, so darkness took over for a moment. But he flicked on the light switch that was apparently at the top of the stairs, illuminating the basement in the light provided by a small hanging lamp in the middle of the room. "Hey doll," he said as their eyes met. She tried to shove the terror out of her mind since she was pretty sure of what he wanted and she would need to be able to resist. "Are you bored, 'cuz I'm bored." He wrapped his fingers around the wire of the cage, and he leaned his weight against it. "You wanna do something with me to pass the time?"

She wasn't sure if he really wanted an answer or not, but she didn't give him one. He probably would have ignored the answer anyway. He unlocked the cage and slipped inside. "I can see your hesitation." He approached her, and she tried backing up, but the damn chain-link wall was right there. "But you can bet I can make you feel like a real lady." He put his left hand onto her shoulder. "So there's no need for your hesitation." He placed his other hand on her waist, and it burned so much Adriel thought there would be a scar there later. "I won't force it, but with you I won't have to, right?"

He pulled her to him and began kissing her neck. She tried to say no, but it didn't come out right. He took the sound as a cue to keep going and trailed some kisses across her jaw and to her mouth where he forcefully plunged his tongue through her lips and teeth. It was going too far, so she pulled her head away and her mouth out of the kiss and pushed on his chest to give him the hint to leave. But he completely mistook this for her asking him to take his shirt off, which he complied to with a smirk on his face.

Adriel used this opportunity to sidle over a bit and get out of his grasp. "I didn't mean that!" she explained. "I meant I can't—I don't want to do this!" She slid down to the floor as Allen fixed his shirt.

"Oh yeah? Well screw you, bitch!" He punched her in the face in a hissy fit and stormed away. She guessed she'd have two black eyes now.

On the third day, she was happy Allen didn't come back down looking to finish business. Instead, another, much more cheerful (and creepy) man came down with a plate of dinner for his captive. "Hello poppet," he singsonged down to her. "I made you some dinner." As if on cue, her stomach rumbled long and low. Oliver chuckled at the noise as he pushed the meal through the flap. Then he bolted up the stairs, giggling like a two-year-old who ate too much chocolate.

The dish was some kind of meat concoction with some carrots. It tasted like pork, but there was something weird about it, like it was too sweet. She couldn't exactly care, though. She hadn't eaten in days, and she couldn't keep doing that. It felt so nice to have some food in her stomach again.

The feeling didn't last too long. Her stomach rumbled again after only five minutes had passed, and then her meal was regurgitated out onto the floor. She had been tricked by Oliver to eat some unknown meat that had been tainted with some kind of poison. Great. She scrambled away from her vomit and sat in the opposite corner. She wrapped her arms around her knees and sobbed again.

On the fourth day, Luciano gave Adriel a visit. The beating was so bad that her mind repressed it and she couldn't remember it after it happened, which, of course, made her question whether or not it really did happen or if the darkness and the hunger had driven her crazy. But she could feel the sharp ache flood through her body whenever she moved even a little bit. And she cried from her agony.

But the fifth day was different. James had been the one to make an appearance, and down with him he brought a delicious and syrupy treat; pancakes baked to a light golden-brown and swimming in maple syrup, just like they would be at a nice diner. "Morning Adriel," he grumbled as he pushed the breakfast through the flap on the cage door. He took a step back and remarked, "Damn. Someone beat you up real good." Adriel decided to just ignore that last bit.

She was apprehensive about eating for about a millisecond. Then she remembered she hadn't eaten anything in forever. She pounced on the meal and swallowed down pancake after pancake. James watched her, surprised by her actions. "Did no one feed you this whole time?"

"Oliver did, but it was a joke and I threw it up," she said around a mouthful. "So no, not really."

"Damn. I'm sorry. I thought they'd at least give you cereal or something," he said, disappointed. She paused from stuffing her face. He sounded genuinely upset, which totally went against both his personality and all she knew about living here. It made her uneasy and cautious about what he was planning. He slid down against the cage, facing away from Adriel when he sat. "You know, I'm almost sorry for you," he grumbled in a tone that was so low it was barely audible. "I almost wish I could do something to make living this way better for you."

She choked on her pancakes and punched her chest to dislodge the food. "Well you better watch yourself then," she muttered, "because that's almost kind." He let out his bone-chilling chuckle that sent a shiver up her spine. What was so funny about that? It was true.

"If I was kind, I'd help you escape," he muttered.

A moment of silence passed between them as Adriel finished up her pancakes. She pushed the empty plate back out the flap on the door and sat down with her back to James'. "You know," he said, "Luciano is planning on kidnapping Lady Specter tomorrow and then going to Japan next week."

"Are you sure you got the right person this time?" she grumbled. But what she really wondered was why Feliciano would be in Japan.

James shrugged. "Last time, Luciano did all the research and stuff, so it's not surprising that he got it wrong. But Kuro found her this time, so he's probably right."

"Oh," was all she could think of to say. So Luciano's incompetence was what caused this whole chain of events. She hated him even more now.

"Enough of that, though, eh?" He stretched out his arms in front of him, and as they fell back to his sides, he asked, "Is your amnesia going away yet? Do you remember anything?"

"As a matter of fact…"


	21. Before

Chapter Twenty-One: Before

It all came back to her in a subtle way. There wasn't a signal from her brain that pinged and let her know her memory file had finished downloading. There wasn't an impressive sequence of her life flashing before her eyes as all her memories flooded back to her. She sat on the floor after Luciano beat her, happened to think back to Before, and suddenly knew her past, like she had never had amnesia at all.

Rhea Short was her mom. She held many odd jobs throughout Adriel's childhood, but she never actually told Adriel what she did. Her dad's name was Abraham Short, but his friends just called him Abe. He was always out overseas with the navy, so Adriel never really saw him. Rhea constantly worried about Abe and would cope by telling Adriel about him and reading her the letters he sent them. From a very young age, Adriel was taught that her father was a great person who sacrificed so much for his country, and anyone could learn how to be a man from him. And Adriel aspired to be just as great of a person as him. She was determined to join the military when she was only six years old.

Adriel had a motto she would chant whenever she got scared as a child. She would use it to break her fear of the dark after Rhea tucked her in at night. She would use it when she climbed the tall rock wall at recess all the way to the top. She would use it when she had to give a report in front of her fifth grade class on the book she read. She would tell herself: "Daddy would be brave. I must be brave. Show no fear." And the fear would vanish.

Rhea stopped talking about Abe when Adriel turned ten. He died on the frontlines, and Rhea cried for a week straight. But whenever Adriel would ask what was wrong, her mom would wipe her tears and feign a smile and assure her nothing. She pretended that Abe never existed in the first place, which Adriel speculated years later was the only way her mother could cope with his complete loss.

The motto Adriel made up when she was little carried into her teenage years, though it was manipulated and changed. Daddy was not brave in her eyes anymore. He let the nightmare of war get the best of him, and he was not strong enough to come out alive. Adriel would be. Then _she'd _be the one her mom looked up to, the great person anyone could learn to be a man from. And her motto would be short and to the point. "Show no fear."

She had no trouble making friends, for most people seemed to love listening to her tell stories and make jokes. She had an imagination that could make even the most stuck-up individuals crack a smile. She was invited to her fair share of wild parties where the host's parents were not home, the first of which was especially stressful for her. That was the night she got drunk and lost her innocence, all in the name of her fearlessness.

This same fearlessness carried into her military training. She wasn't the best at hand-to-hand combat, but she was ahead of almost everyone else at the obstacle course and shooting ranges. She secretly felt the rifle was her calling, and predicted that she'd be a part of the group of snipers who took out the specific targets.

She was right, but she'd never guess that when her big chance came to kill an evil man, she'd back out of it. That's right—Feliciano was not her first failed attempt to kill someone. She didn't kiss the first man, of course. That treason would have resulted in thousands upon thousands of people hating her guts instead of just the few in this house, and he wasn't nice and cute like Feliciano was. But she did have a mental breakdown and told the guy next to her to take him out for her. This resulted in her disgrace.

Maybe her dad _was _actually brave all those years ago. He had been able to at least carry out his orders before his death. Adriel realized she was not cut out for military life and dropped out as soon as she could.

She tried to go back and visit her mom in New York City, but she had skipped town just after Adriel left. Adriel was alone in the world long before the accident that gave her amnesia, and she was still alone Now. She could only remember the car crash that resulted in her amnesia faintly, but the memory of waking up in the hospital bed with no recollection of anything but her name was as clear as day.

She explained all this to James, who seemed genuinely interested, but that could have been her imagination playing tricks on her. Ever since she made this revelation, she had been itching to tell it to someone. And why would he have asked if he really didn't care?

"And then we found you wandering along the streets of New York and ruined your life even further," he concluded. "Well, at least you know who you were _now_, right?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "It just took an angry Luciano to beat it out of me."

"Yeah… At least he won't be here tomorrow since they're gonna get Lady Specter, and he's out right now," he explained, "so you'll be safe for a while."

Adriel looked down at the elaborate scars that ran up her arms. As long as she was in this house, she would never feel "safe."

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I took most of the army-training-stuff from what I remembered from when I played the videogame <em>Beyond: Two Souls<em>, so please don't hate me too much if it's completely wrong.


	22. Will the Real Lady Specter Stand Up?

Chapter Twenty-Two: Will the Real Lady Specter Please Stand Up?

A woman was in her kitchen. Her house was a one-story building with nothing impressive or eye-catching about it except for its seclusion. No houses lined either side of the street around it for at least a mile on either side. This woman loved her seclusion. She and society never exactly mixed.

Her current name was Mira Matthews, and she held many similar features Adriel had what with her dark eyes and unimpressive appearance. Although, her brown hair was a shade darker and a few inches longer, and her face held wrinkles of age Adriel did not have. Mira was also significantly taller than Adriel was, and she held a tough air about her that Adriel tried but could not possess.

She had two young daughters, Bella and Lynn, both with dirty blonde hair and green eyes like their dad. They sat in the living room and watched TV. She made chicken stir fry for her little girls and her husband Jack. He should be home from work in half an hour, plenty enough time for her to finish the meal and set the table.

It was an average Friday for this average family. No one would have guessed it would go wrong.

The television in the living room was suddenly turned off, bathing the house in an almost ominous silence. Mira blew it off, explaining to herself that her daughters must have been trying to nap and the TV shows were keeping them up. It didn't stay quiet for long, though.

Lynn started screeching like a banshee. She was only about six months old, so it wouldn't her shrieks would not have been so surprising if they didn't sound so distressed. The baby screech was followed by a more powerful scream from the four-year-old Bella. Mira sprinted into the living room, clutching the handle of a kitchen knife, without a second thought.

She found a man with messy blonde hair holding her baby Lynn upside-down by one of her legs. Another man with short, black hair held Bella tight to him, katana blade at her throat. A third man sat on her couch and peered at her. A scowl rested on his face from all the screaming around him. Mira gripped her knife tighter. "Ciao," he said, and the reader mentally confirmed that these men were Lutz, Kuro, and Luciano.

Lynn wailed away miserably, and Bella muttered, "Mommy, what's going on? I'm scared." Mira's heart sank seeing her children like this, and her instincts switched on.

"What the hell do you think you're doing with them? Do you know who you're messing with?" Her voice withheld its strength, even in this situation.

"Actually." Luciano stood up "We do know who you are, Lady Specter." Mira's jaw tightened. Her past had finally caught up to her. She figured it would eventually, she just didn't predict it would be so soon. "We have a preposition for you, and you have two choices: decline and watch my friends murder your babies, or accept and see them freed."

Mira gulped. Lutz held Lynn by her underarms now, and he was clearly growing more and more pissed off by her inability to shut up. Bella looked with shining eyes from the blade at her neck to her mom, but she dared not to move. Mira stared down Luciano. "What's your preposition?"

He explained what was up just like he had to Adriel oh-so-long ago. The targets were immortal personified countries. He needed help taking them out because there was some external force that would not allow them to. She may just be their last hope.

She accepted. They were crazy, but they had her children. If these insane terms were the deal in getting them back, then so be it. They must stay safe and innocent. As promised, Kuro let Bella go and Lutz gave Lynn back to her. She hugged them both tight for several minutes, but felt the impatience of the kidnappers tear at her goodbyes. She carefully gave Lynn to Bella to hold. "Watch her for me, please, Bella? Just until Daddy gets home. You're a big girl; I'm sure you can handle it."

"Don't trust them, Mommy," Bella said. "They're bad people." Her eyes never stopped shining.

Mira stared down Luciano, who was motioning her out the door. "I know."

They were going to hurt her babies. They gave her no choice but to oblige. But once she got the chance, she _would_ return to her family. That was a promise.


	23. The Story of Lady Specter

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Story of Lady Specter

Kan Rivers was the original name of Lady Specter, and she wasn't always an assassinating machine with unparalleled success and skill. It wasn't for a very long time, but she used to be a normal girl. She was born as the first child of a happy couple who loved her and took care of her like any good parents would. At least, that's what Kan liked to believe. She didn't actually remember them. She had a single picture of them, and they seemed like nice people. But the truth was they held no real meaning to Kan's life in the present day, no matter how sad that may be.

Actually, up until a few years ago, Kan had believed that she was the daughter of Stephen P. Rivers, a mildly successful politician. She lived with him and talked to him and had barely any contact with anyone else outside their house. In her life, she watched him go from nobody, to small-town mayor, to governor of Rhode Island, to presidential candidate. But he didn't succeed from popularity and luck alone. He had a little bit of help from his "daughter."

The people who voted for him were too distracted by his winning smile and promise of the future to suspect anything malicious happening behind-the-scenes. They didn't think the deaths of his political rivals had anything to do with him, and any who began to catch on to what was happening was quickly dealt with in the same matter the politicians were. They were all assassinated. And by the same girl.

Kan was taught by her "father" that the world was black and white. People were grouped into good and evil and there was a thick line between the two. She was taught that there was no other way, no second chances, no epiphanies were one sees the error of his ways. And in order to protect both herself and the rest of the world, she needed to bring the evil ones down.

She was forbidden from watching TV, using the internet, and even reading books. That would have exposed her to ideas from the media that Stephen didn't want planted in her mind. She would never be allowed the stimulation for ideas that he did not give her. She could only be what her "dad" wanted her to be. So she was specially trained how to use a variety of modern weapons like silenced guns and knives to properly pull off an assassination.

She pulled off her first execution when she was only sixteen. She took down a man named Patrick Young; little did she know this evil man also happen to be daddy's political opponent. And she kept murdering people under her dad's orders.

But although she was an assassin, she was still human. She doubted whether each target's death actually helped the "good" people. She regretted killing some of them, too. They all had family and friends and people who loved them, so they couldn't be all evil. Of course, she would never express her true doubts and regrets with her dad and instead buried the pain deep inside her heart. She was not meant to kill, but she continued to for the sake of her father—and possibly the whole world!

But Kan knew she was more meant to love. She secretly dreamed fantasy romances with fictional men in her mind behind her stoic expression. She was pretty sure any boy her age whom she talked to didn't see her as that type of girl and ruled her off his list of possible future mates. No one had ever tried finding his way into her heart, and she feared no one ever would.

This was a pretty worthless fear, for she found love with Jack Matthews, the son of a close family friend who was the same age as Kan. It didn't take long for him to steal her heart. Everything Kan had ever dreamed of suddenly came true, and she was ready to give up her career as the so aptly named Lady Specter.

She was twenty-four and completely allowed to leave and start a family of her own, but her dad could not let her leave. This wasn't because he wasn't "ready to let his little girl go" like he told her, but because his political plans with her weren't finished. He still needed her. He begged her, pleaded on his knees, for her to stay and continue to rid the world of evil. What he didn't tell her was that hiring a new assassin in her place was dangerous. No one was a good or clean as Kan, nor did anyone else hold as much loyalty to him as she did. That's why he raised her, after all.

There was only one major target left to take out, so Kan agreed to get rid of one last target before she ran away with Jack. That happened to be Donnell O'Neill, the same man assassinated at the very beginning of this story, though he was not the last man Kan would murder.

While she was off killing, Jack went snooping. He had had an uneasy feeling about Stephen; he knew that man was plotting something sinister for Kan, even if she denied it. He found some pretty shady stuff under a pile of dust in some neglected room of their mansion. Mailing boxes filled with stuffed toys and baby diapers lined the walls, but they were all old and decayed. A mound of letters sat on an old, creaky wood table, all with the same return address, he noticed. Only two letters were opened, though, and they were placed separate from the rest of the pile. One was from more than twenty years ago, and the other was from only a couple of months ago.

Jack opened the older letter and read through it. The handwriting was less English and more chicken scratch written by a shaky hand, but he was still able to make out what it said.

Kan's grandmother Abigail wrote to her son Stephen expressing the overwhelming grief in her heart. Her younger son and her daughter-in-law were brutally murdered in their home only a day before she wrote this. Her son was shot at least twelve times! How could anyone be cruel enough to do that to another person, she wondered. And all the while, her daughter-in-law was tied down and forced to witness this. She had struggled to fight their attacker off, but she wasn't able to stop him from plunging a knife into her throat.

And their poor baby! Kan was screaming in her crib, wet and hungry, when anyone finally went to investigate her parents' disappearance. It made Abigail even sadder to think her little granddaughter would grow up without really knowing her parents. Abigail then proceeded to describe how old and unfit to raise a child she was, but she didn't want to put her up for adoption and never know what happened to her. Could you, Stephen, please raise her?

Jack knew he had made a discovery. Kan didn't know that her parents were murdered and her "dad" was actually her uncle. And why did Stephen do that? What other parts of Kan's life were based on lies? He opened the second letter eager to find more deceitful secrets about the suspicious man Stephen.

The second letter was sent twenty years after the first one. "What do you think you're doing?" was the first sentence. Abigail commanded an onslaught of questions at Stephen, interrogating him about how and why he raised Kan the way he did. Was he just using her to take out his enemies? That was a complete abuse of power, and Abigail would not stand for it. She was going to come and take Kan away from him and teach her how to be a proper human being. She was sorry, but the nightmarish things she could only imagine Stephen had Kan do scared her too much for her to ignore. She raised him better than to take advantage of his niece.

A week after the signed date, Abigail had died of a "heart attack," though Jack highly doubted that it was an accident after reading this letter. Kan knew about her grandmother, but she had never actually met the woman. She attended the funeral out of respect, but the first time she ever seen her was at the viewing. She always wondered why Stephen never allowed her to see her grandma beforehand, and now Jack knew why. He shoved his evidence into his back pocket and waited for Kan to get home.

Kan walked through the front door, looking forward to the vodka she had saved for this special occasion. Jack met up with her in the foyer and told her all about Stephen's plans and lies and showed her the proof from her grandmother's letters. Kan was, reasonably, furious.

She had been lied to for more than twenty years. She was commanded by her scheming uncle to murder his rivals in the name of good, but she was really just a pawn for evil. Stephen would not go unpunished. As he had taught her since she was a little girl, all evil people must die.

Stephen was drunk in his luxurious bed when Kan and Jack found him. He was rolling around in a pile of his money, celebrating the climax of his lifelong plot. This infuriated Kan even more. Was he only after money and power this whole time? The same two principles every evil person based their goals upon? She was disgusted.

"I know the truth, _uncle_," she spat at him.

He smiled at her with his crooked teeth. "It's about time," he slurred. Kan couldn't agree more.

She cast a glance back at Jack in the doorway as she entered the room. "I'm sorry," she said lowly, hoping she wouldn't scar him with her next action. She slit Stephen's throat right there in front of her innocent fiancé. He didn't know how to react to his future wife murdering her own father (even if he was actually her uncle). He was scared, impressed, and slightly turned on all at the same time. They rushed out of the house and were on the road in no more than ten seconds.

In the car, Kan was hysteric. She apologized profusely for killing someone in front of him and muttered about how there was probably a better way to handle the situation. She promised over and over she would never murder anyone ever again. She had no reason to now. And once they had children, they would be raised a million times better than she was. They would not have to hold these nearly unbearable emotional scars. She wouldn't allow it. Jack couldn't agree more.

They got married that night, and Kan declared her new name would be Mira Matthews after the mother she never knew and the husband she would always love. He was all she had left now, at least until they had their brown-haired, green-eyed daughters Bella and Lynn. Her life finally seemed perfect.

Of course, it wouldn't stay that way. Her perfect life was only broken by a certain group of troublemakers who found out her secret.


	24. Outside the Cage

Chapter Twenty-Four: Outside the Cage

Adriel was in a great mood. She felt almost cheerful; something she thought would never be possible again. She guessed being freed from confinement was enough to do that to a person. Due to the momentary absence of everyone else, James had decided she could get out of her dirty old cage and stretch her legs. She was more than happy to.

At first, she walked around the couch in their living room over and over, enjoying the freedom and the light as James baked some more pancakes. They talked about light-hearted topics such as animals and cracked jokes at each other, mostly about Luciano's intelligence (or lack thereof).

Once James had finished preparing their meal, he brought a plate for each of them into the living room and sat down on the couch with her. The couch may have been an ugly orange color and had a huge hole on the side where the stuffing leaked out, but it was a major comfort upgrade from the bloody basement floor. They ended up watching _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic _since it was already on and neither of them felt like changing it.

Adriel shoved a pancake into her mouth, only admiring the sweet, gooey taste for a couple of seconds before gulping it down her throat. James really piled the maple syrup on his pancakes. "Are these the only things you make or something?" she questioned, waving one around on the end of her plastic fork.

"They're the only things I make well," he grumbled.

She giggled a little. "I can only make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches well," she admitted. He chuckled, and she found herself not repulsed by the sound for once. She guessed it was growing on her.

When they finished eating, James offered the bathroom upstairs to her if she wanted a shower. He also gave her some more of his old clothes if she wanted something to change into. She accepted the offer graciously.

She tried not to stare at her scars and bruises, new and old, that were reflected in the mirror as she climbed into the tub and let the hot water drown her worries and sorrows.

There was not a room in this house that didn't have an evil vibe to it, she was pretty sure, and the bathroom was no exception. The first noticeable thing in the room was a round, face-sized crack in the huge mirror directly across from the door with traces of blood still visible at the edge of each fracture. The sink bowl had a buildup of some kind of gross sludge that was only beaten by the disgusting fungus growing on the toilet bowl. She would just have to hover, she decided. The tub wasn't too bad, though, probably because water cleaned it out regularly.

James had given her a plain white t-shirt and baggy blue jeans. Nice, simple, and very comfortable. He was watching some show Adriel had never seen when she joined him again on the couch. "Thanks," she told him. "For everything. Even if you can't let me escape, I appreciate your kindness."

He seemed uncomfortable hearing her gratitude. No one had ever thanked him before. He guessed he never really did anything worthy of anyone's appreciation before. It was… kind of nice to hear. "Um, it's no problem, I guess."

"Why, though?" she inquired. "Why are you so nice to me while everyone else treats me like shit?" He didn't answer. "How did you get wrapped up in all this insanity when you're not insane yourself?"

His sigh lasted for at least five minutes before he spoke. "You couldn't begin to imagine all the horrors I've caused other people throughout my life. But it's not exactly our fault that we're like this."

"What do you mean?" she pressed. His gaze stayed on the floor. He couldn't believe he was going to tell her, but it only felt right.

"You see Adriel, we're immortal, too, but we aren't the regular country representatives. We're counterparts—alternate colors with alternate personalities. The second-players whose purpose has always been questioned. But we're here, and we're bloodthirsty."

She blinked at him. "Is that some kind of joke?" she deadpanned.

"Oh my fucking… No, that is not a goddamn joke." His hand covered his face in disappointment. He should have predicted her doubt. "Look: for example, Feliciano is the first-player, the actual country representative of Italy, right? But Luciano is the murderous second-player, another color of Feliciano who's immortal but doesn't really have a purpose. And it sucks."

"So… is there like some other immortal Canadian walking around who looks like you?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, but he's a total fucking loser. He blends in with the background so well you wouldn't even be able to notice him standing there. And he's way too polite."

"Are you planning on killing him too?"

"Probably eventually if it all works out in Japan."

"Why?"

"Luciano believes that if a first-player is killed, the second-player takes their place. That's why he was so insistent on getting Feliciano. I used to think so, too, but not really anymore. We've been trying for years and just can't seem to get them. Something always goes wrong."

Suddenly, James seemed like a normal guy to Adriel; not a kidnapper or a psychopath. He was immortal, and she couldn't even imagine how many lifetimes he had lived through. But he had nothing to do, so he created a goal to reach at all costs, even if it came to killing others. It sounded like the story of any human obsessed with success whose path had strayed.

But her mind cautioned her about giving excuses to James' actions. _Don't want to get Stockholm-syndrome now. Any sympathy could be your downfall. _She didn't even know if he was telling the truth. She just wildly trusted him like she was his pet or something.

_I guess I'm a dog in that respect. See what happens when man feeds the caged animal? _Why was her mind being so mean to her for? She was outside the cage. There was no confinement around her, and there was no darkness. She should be happy.

They sat quiet for a long time on the couch as Adriel's mind wandered. The sky grew dark outside as evening approached. Suddenly, James spoke. "Can you tell me what was so great about Feliciano that it made you commit treason?"

She was caught off guard with that question, and she couldn't think of a response right away. She knew the answer, of course, but why did he care? Should it matter to him? And could that really be considered treason? "…Well, he was the first person after I got amnesia who really tried to be my friend, and he was the first person after I was kidnapped who was nice to me. So it wasn't like I kissed him purely to smite you guys." But it was a terrible consequence.

"Luciano sure has a way of manipulating circumstances, then." He stretched his arms over his head. "It was kind of funny how flustered he got about it."

Her glare could not be mistaken for anything other than pure hatred. "It was not funny. His temper tantrum was painful and mean, and I lost a finger because of it."

"Yeah, I think Allen threw that into the trashcan in the hotel in Italy, so you'll probably never get it back. I still can't believe that dumbass vegetarian wouldn't eat it."

She was quite insulted by his blatant disregard for her torture, but she knew not to be disappointed by his insensible nature. That's who he was, after all. She squeaked out a half-hearted "Ew, I wouldn't either" and tilted her head down to study her lap.

"Can you still even remember your finger? Or do you need a beating to be able to? You could use all the pancakes you ate as a kind of shield. You had enough of them." He was trying to get her to laugh (at least she hoped so), but he chose the wrong things to joke about right now. She wished he would just stop, but those were the kinds of jokes he used with Allen and everyone else. Why would she get upset?

A shaky laugh came out of her mouth, very obviously forced. But he would just keep going if he didn't get some kind of response. "Yeah, ha ha ha." Tears welded up in her eyes, but he didn't catch her change in mood until the dams broke and water flowed down her face.

"Shit, Adriel. Was it something I said?" He didn't know what he was doing or what he was saying. He kind of just let it happen. He guessed he made fun of the wrong thing. Oh well, all he could do now was make things right. He cupped her face with one of his hands and wiped away a tear. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry."

They were staring into each other's eyes, two lonely people on the same couch within enough proximity of each other to do more stuff than just talk. She was wearing his clothes, and he held a comforting hand to her cheek. What more could motivate romance?

Adriel and James both glanced down at each other's mouths at the same time, and they both leaned in. The contact was strangely slow and sweet at first. They were both plagued with the fact that they shouldn't be doing this, but they couldn't bring themselves to stop. And so, they wrapped their arms around each other and proceeded to make out.

There was a lot of tongue work and wandering hands involved, and at some point James picked Adriel up to move her onto his lap. He smirked into their kiss when she placed her legs on either side of his torso to straddle him. They pulled at each other's clothes, both wanting more than just a kiss, though nothing more actually happened.

Just as James began to unbutton Adriel's shirt, the front door down the hall clicked. Luciano stood, pissed off of course, on the other side of the door with the knob in his hand. After a day of driving the van and kidnapping another annoying girl, he was ready for a nice, long rest. Though once he opened the door and heard the gross sounds of lovers drift down the hall from the living room, he knew his plans would have to wait.


	25. A New Plan

Chapter Twenty-Five: A New Plan

Luciano ordered Kuro and Lutz to lock Mira in the guest room while he dealt with the repulsive lovers in the living room. They nodded and showed her up the stairs. Luciano marched down the hall and burst into the room, his face flushed with anger. "What the hell do you two think you're doing?!"

Adriel jumped an unrealistic distance away from James in a heartbeat, nearly knocking over the TV as she landed on the other side of the room. She fixed her shirt and tried to smooth out her hair, her face painted bright crimson all the while. She tried to say "Nothing," but it came out more like "Nu-Nu-Nu-Nnnn…" She hoped with all her might that Luciano wouldn't overreact again.

James was much less embarrassed than her. He was too cool to get all flustered like that. He remained seated on the couch looking slightly more irritated than usual. He glared at Luciano and bitterly asked, "Did you find the real Lady Specter yet?"

"Yes, but don't change the subject!" Luciano responded. "You know la cagna shouldn't be out of her cage! And you guys sure as hell shouldn't be having sex on the couch!"

"We weren't," James deadpanned. Adriel's face burned an even darker shade of red. "Besides, you're not our supreme king, and I can do whatever the fuck I want without your permission." Luciano practically shook in his silent fury. Adriel knew he would take it out on her, but James kept going, oblivious to how dire the situation may be. "I know you hurt her whenever you're in the mood to, so I'm obviously not the only one to use her when she actually happens to be useful. We both know how rare that is since she's a fake, so…"

He kept talking, but Adriel refused to listen anymore. What he said was not only making Luciano even angrier, it was also revealing James' true feelings about her. She thought there was something different about him from her other captors. She thought he talked to her like another human being and not like scum from off the side of the street. She thought he was her friend. She had clearly thought wrong. Tears welded up in her eyes, but they dared not fall. Not for an asshole like him.

She snapped. She was so done living this way. Standing there hearing James rattle off shit to Luciano with her fists clenched at her sides, Adriel made herself a promise. She was going to escape from them, and they weren't going to stop her. The little piece of paper with Feliciano's number on it rubbed against her toe like a hot rock inside her shoe. A plan was already forming in her mind; she'd just need Feliciano to comply.

"Alright, James, shut up!" Luciano suddenly shouted. "She's been a pain in my ass since the day we picked her up off the street, and I'm tired of it. I'm going to plan a day before we leave for Japan and execute her then. That way, I can return to this dump of a home without seeing that liar's face anymore." He said this to James, who remained more or less impassive. A small amount of fear bubbled up inside Adriel, but mostly anger rushed through her veins.

She'd be out of this place before Luciano ever had the chance to 'execute' her. He'll see.

Luciano turned to her with a grimace on his face. "You'll stay down in the goddamn basement until then, liar." With that, he wrapped an iron grip around her hair and dragged her down the stairs. She struggled at first, but Luciano was surprisingly full of strength, especially when he was this pissed off. Once they began descending the stairs, she just wanted to keep up and not fall down. Her scalp screamed, but she focused off the pain like she had so many other times. Her plan needed to be carried through.

Once he threw her inside her cage, he wasted no time before punishing her with his fists for yet another disgrace. She was grateful he didn't break out a knife this time, and compared to other beatings, this one was pretty quick. There was something sluggish about his movements; the real Lady Specter must have been harder to handle than he anticipated.

Adriel sat in the corner of the cage as she watched him walk away. He sent her a nasty glare before ascending the stairs and plunging her in shadows. A wide grin broke out onto her face in the darkness. She pulled something out of her pocket and illuminated her face with light. She was able to swipe Luciano's cell phone from his pocket and slip it into her own without him noticing. She unlocked it easily since he had no password and created a new text message, filling the "Send to" bar with the number Feliciano had given her. The message was as follows:

_"Help its adriel im kidnapped and u r the only one I can contact im somewhere outside nyc and they may kill me soon dont reply im srry." _

She felt so relieved when the message sent, but her excitement immediately drained when she heard the basement door creak open again. She frantically deleted the message and slid the phone out through a crack between the floor and the chain-link fence of the cage.

Luciano was fuming when he walked back down the stairs. How dare that little bitch of a prisoner steal his phone! She didn't even have anyone she could contact! She was just trying to get him pissed off! At least, that's what his angry mind told him as he approached the basement floor, but when he reached Adriel's cage, he found her wrapped in a ball in the corner where he had left her (though now she was facing her back towards him). His phone, meanwhile, was outside the cage—too far out of Adriel's reach for her to actually use.

He scooped up his cell, relaxing a little bit. He had just dropped it after all. Now he could go nap in his room without worrying about anything. As he sauntered back up the stairs, Adriel couldn't suppress the grin on her face. He was too stupid to suspect a thing. She might have actually thought up a good escape plan.

…Except for the fact that Feliciano lived four thousand plus miles from her in Italy, and it was rather unlikely he'd drop everything and fly out here before Luciano's planned execution day for her. Although, somehow, the hope in her soul was enough to convince her she'd be saved somehow.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: This is kind of awkward, but this is the last chapter I have fully written. The story has finally caught up with me :[ The next chapter is not finished, and the last one hasn't been started at all, meaning it may take a few days for an update. I'm sorry! But thank you to anyone who actually read this far! :)<p> 


	26. Impending Doom

Chapter Twenty-Six: Impending Doom

Days passed, and with each one, the hope in Adriel's heart shrunk further into a black abyss while her despair sprouted wings and soared high into the sky. She had always been pretty afraid that Luciano would end her life one day, but somehow doubted he really would. After that little incident with James, though, she knew it was definitely coming. When exactly, she couldn't tell, but the scheduled date was approaching fast and she was terrified.

They didn't _completely_ neglect her during the days that led to her execution. The basement door opened occasionally, breaking her focus on praying for a savior. Whenever this happened, Oliver usually walked down the stairs with a big, crazy smile on his face and food in his hand. That horribly wide smile mocked her, and her throat constricted as if she was about to cry whenever she saw it.

Ever since the first time Oliver fed her poison, Adriel had been rightfully doubtful about eating his food, and she still didn't know what the peculiar meat was. But she had no other option than to take another gamble and chow down on his risky meal, even if it could be the death of her. She convinced herself Luciano would want to kill her himself using torture she couldn't even imagine. Oliver's poison would be the least of her worries; therefore, she ate it without an objection. Food was food when you're locked up and starving in a psychopath's basement.

Occasionally, though, the door would immediately close upon opening and no one would walk down, leaving Adriel very confused and scared. She could only speculate it was a part of Luciano's twisted plan to stir more terror into her heart. "Well, it's working you big jerk!" she'd scream at him. Whether or not her assumption was true was irrelevant. They couldn't hear her anyway.

She hated them so much. All of them. They made her this way, turned her into this sniveling ball of fear and hate constantly in a state of panic. But even more than them, she hated the terror that filled every ounce of her being all the time. Fear was never a part of her life before, and it shouldn't be now. But the reality was: she had a _lot _of fear now.

The door up the stairs creaked open, and a thin beam of light broke through the dank darkness. Her stomach growled as if it were calling out to Oliver to nourish it with his food. Then her brain reminded her to be weary. It could be Luciano coming down to kill her, after all. So she retreated further into the corner as she waited for what would happen.

Meanwhile, James hovered at the top of the stairs. He really wanted to talk to Adriel and patch things up. Whatever nonsense spewed from his mouth that day to save his face wasn't true, and he wanted her to know that. He saw the sparkle in her eyes diminish as he spoke those regretful words to Luciano and desperately wished he could take them back. He wasn't just using her. He actually did like her. He was impressed how long she could go without losing her sanity—without becoming just like them.

He wanted to tell her that, and he wanted to apologize, but he just couldn't. He realized the door to the basement was still open, and he was just standing at the top like an indecisive weirdo, so he shut it again. As he walked away, he reasoned that even if he went down to talk to Adriel, she'd only persuade him to do something crazy like help her run away, so of course he couldn't see her. And of course he wasn't just being a coward.

Down below, Adriel screamed up to Luciano, "Quit doing that asshole!"

* * *

><p>Adriel had finally managed to fall asleep for once. She rested her head and back against the wall and stuck her feet out in front of her in the most comfortable position she could manage without putting her head to the dirty floor. Her mind held her in a much-needed dream of fictional paradise. Sunlight so warm and comforting. Acre after acre of open grassland. A new, clean dress and washed hair. A smile upon her face that she wasn't even conscious of. She felt completely at peace for once.<p>

A round of bullets fired from a gun stirred her awake and pulled her out of her beautiful, wonderful dream. Crushing reality punched her square in the brain when she opened her eyes to see only darkness. She would have cried if she wasn't so focused on what was happening above.

A door slammed open, and what sounded like a thousand elephants stormed into the house. Familiar voices erupted in shouts, demanding to know what this was about.

Adriel had no idea what was going on. She couldn't even bring her mind to fabricate a ridiculous story to explain it for the time being. Some kind of struggle broke out upstairs. Glass shattered. People shouted. Someone screamed. And all Adriel could do was listen from inside the cage.

Suddenly, the basement door burst open. Another herd of elephants tumbled down the stairs like maniacs. Well, they were actually a SWAT team, and they were all led by a smiling blond guy. He looked familiar, although Adriel couldn't place why right away. "Hey, Adriel," he said as his blue eyes sparkled, "the hero has come to save you!" He pointed his gun at the lock on the cage and broke it with a bullet.

"What?" she spluttered out. She couldn't believe it. She was finally being freed, like for real.

"I'm Alfred F. Jones, and I've come to rescue you!" He swung the cage open and stuck out his hand. "Shall we get you out of here?"

His familiarity suddenly hit her. He looked just like a happy, blond Allen, so he must have been the representative of America. But why did he come? How did he know she needed to be saved? …Then again, who cared about those details right now? Adriel certainly didn't. She smiled graciously and took the hand of her savior.

After so long, she would finally be free!

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I'm so sorry it took this long to get this chapter out, and I hope it didn't seem rushed or unfinished. We're getting so close to the end, and I don't want to leave anyone hanging, so I'll try my best in the next, and probably final, chapter.<p>

In other news, I have started another Hetalia fanfic, if anyone is interested in that. If you like 2p! Hetalia, you should definitely check that out. It's called _Rescuing the Princess_, and you can find it on my profile if you're interested. I'd really appreciate it!


	27. Rescue

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Rescue

Alfred brought Adriel up the stairs of the basement and out the front door of the house. A strange feeling hung in the outdoor air around her as she was led down the broken cement pathway of the old, terrible house to a good, safe car. It was a feeling she couldn't quite place, but it was nice and loose on her shoulders and she liked it very much.

He told her something about catching all her captors in that black van over there and asking her questions at the police station later, but she only vaguely heard. He couldn't blame her for not listening very well after all she'd been through. Whatever details he was explaining must not have been all that important, anyways, and she was preoccupied trying to name that weird feeling hovering around her.

Once she was situated in the backseat of the safe car with a blanket draped over her shoulders, Alfred let her be for a little bit to discuss whatever police-business he had with the SWAT team.

The car was warm, she noticed. She had been too busy sitting in filth and fearing her death to take note of how cold she'd been in the basement. It must have been late March, early April right now, and she had had no jacket to keep her warm on the long, cold nights since she left Venice so long ago.

Her elbow rested against the window, and her cheek lay in the palm of her hand. Her eyelids drooped down as she imagined eating real, high-quality food with no possibility of being poisoned. She'd be able to now that she was free. She'd also be able to shower in a clean bathroom where it would be safe to assume no one was killed in, wear her own new clothing that actually fit her right, and sleep in a comfy bed with three blankets and eight pillows if she really wanted to.

She smiled to herself as her imagination comforted her. Exhaustion suddenly joined that feeling she couldn't place, and her mind and body both relaxed. There was nothing to worry about now; there was no reason to have any fear anymore. It was great.

Just before her mind slipped into unconsciousness, she realized what that nice, floating feeling was. It was freedom; real, true freedom…

She slept through the entire car ride after her rescue. Alfred and some cop she didn't catch the name of drove in the front seat to the police station, discussing how much she deserved that nap after all she must have went through as the captive of those monstrous second-players. But her struggle was not in vane, for they were able to catch quite a few of those bastards because of her. She was as much of a hero as any one of the SWAT members who rescued her.

Even if she'd been awake to hear that compliment, she wouldn't have believed it. She let fear run her mind for too long, and this was just a lucky break. But the second-players had rampaged the streets for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before then. And in that time, they plotted murders, pulled off robberies, and disrupted society for whatever selfish reasons they had. They needed to be detained for a very long time, and now they finally would be.

Once the group reached the station, Alfred gently shook Adriel awake and kindly asked, "Hey, would you be able to answer some questions for us? It would really help us if we knew more about what happened to you."

The unnamed police officer pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. Alfred, however, remained in the passenger's seat and awaited Adriel's response. The expression on his face was expectant but somewhat reluctant. He must have had some idea what the second-players were like and didn't want to force her to relive unpleasant memories. But she gave him a tiny, reassuring smile and said, "Sure. That's the least I can do for my hero."

He brought her to a fairly small room with a single dim light on the ceiling. The unnamed police man was already in the room, sitting on one side of the table with his pen and paper out to take notes. Alfred apologized for the stifling lack of décor in the room, but she assured him it was no big deal. She took a seat across from him and started spilling her story. It was great to tell someone who seemed to genuinely care all about her experience.

When she got to the part where she managed to steal Luciano's phone to send Feliciano a message for help, Alfred nodded his head dramatically and announced that that message was how they were able to track her down. "Vargas called me up a few days ago, and that dude seemed pretty distraught," he began to explain.

"Oh, so he did get my message…" Adriel muttered to herself. Her plan really did work, and all because Feliciano wanted to have dinner with her. Who knew that encounter would have been so crucial to her survival?

"Yeah," Alfred continued, "and he told me he got a message from an unknown number that said an old friend of his had been kidnapped, likely by our other colors, so we worked to track the location of where the text was sent from. Then I, being the hero I am, took a SWAT team to go and rescue his friend in distress!" He seemed really excited about his heroic actions.

She didn't know how to respond to that, so she settled on saying, "Yeah, thanks for that."

The police officer in the room (who still hadn't given Adriel his name) cleared his throat. "We managed to detain five men from that house into one of our top prisons. Their names are as follows: Luciano Vargas, Allen Jones, James Williams, and Oliver Kirkland. But you said there were six men, correct?"

Adriel blinked at him. "Uh, yeah. There was a Japanese man named Kuro, but I don't know his last name. He wasn't there?"

"Nope," Alfred confirmed. "Sucks, too, but at least we got the others."

"Yes, it is rather unfortunate," the unnamed man agreed.

"I wonder if he knew about the SWAT team coming…" Adriel thought aloud. "He was weird, like the mysterious kind of weird. He always seemed to _know_ stuff…" A silence fell over the room, and Adriel's mind raced. Where would she go after they were done here? The hospital? Maybe they could take a look at her injuries and help a bit, and maybe they'd even give her a room to stay in. She should ask Alfred for a ride. He probably wouldn't mind, right?

"…So who was that other girl in the house?" Alfred finally asked.

Before she thought it through, Adriel blurted out, "Oh, that's the real Lady Specter—" That woman was an assassin who killed a high number of political figures; she had a lot to face in court, and Adriel just ratted her out... Was she supposed to? Oh well, Lady Specter was probably as bad as her ex-captors were, right?

Alfred gave Adriel a look of disbelief while the unnamed man's expression did not change. "We will have to look into that, but thank you for your information, Miss Short."

She nodded and looked down at the table. The man left the room with a curt nod in the others' direction. Once he left, Alfred stuck out his hand to Adriel. "Hey, do you want a ride to the hospital or something? You may want to get some of your injuries looked at… You don't exactly look… you know… normal." He was probably referring to all of Adriel's bruises and scars, plus her missing finger, and she blushed when she noticed how concerned he was for her.

"Yes please."

It was on the way to the hospital Alfred told her Feliciano had booked a plane for New York and was probably heading here right now. "He wanted to fly out here right when he received your text, but that would have taken too long considering airport crap and the Atlantic Ocean, which is why he called me to handle it," Alfred explained to her as he drove. "He wanted you to be safe _before_ he got here so he could see you again without the threat of psychopaths hanging around you."

There wasn't much the hospital could do since most of Adriel's injuries required time to heal. Her doctor checked out her missing finger, wrapped it back up with clean medical supplies, and told her she'd just have to get used to it since she wasn't able to salvage it. At least it was an almost pointless piece of her body anyway, the doctor tried to comfort her.

He bandaged her deepest cuts and advised her to get some sleep and not overindulge on food, but she'd be fine in a few days. Her black eyes were already starting to fade!

It was nighttime once they finally left the hospital. She hadn't checked a clock, but Adriel figured it must have been at least midnight. Alfred offered his home to her if she needed a place to stay (and of course she did). He lived in an impressive mansion, and lending her a guest room was no big deal for him. It even had its own bathroom and everything.

A lady from the police station had brought over a change of clothes for Adriel earlier in the day, and one of Alfred's maids brought it into her room for her. That nice lady planned to send her a couple pairs of clothes to help her adjust back into normal society. Adriel was very grateful. She spent at least two hours in the shower that night before crawling into a bed for the first time in forever. It was like she was in a dream.

Adriel had to wait two more days in order to see Feliciano again. Due to weather implications and whatever other obstacles, he couldn't get a plane right away.

She had just woken up that day and stumbled downstairs still in her pajamas to get some food (which Alfred happened to have a lot of). Her hair was a mess, but no one was supposed to be home, so she didn't have to make herself look decent yet. Little did she know, a certain Italian boy was anxiously waiting for her in the dining room.

She had a bowl of cereal in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other as she entered what she expected to be an empty dining room rather ungracefully with her mouth fully opened in a yawn. She nearly jumped out of her own skin when her eyes locked with an old friend's.

Feliciano sat at the end of the table farthest from her, chatting with Alfred and another man she remembered from carnival named Ludwig. Adriel was so shocked by the sight of those warm, amber eyes and that she dropped her breakfast onto the floor. Alfred laughed heartily, and Ludwig sweat-dropped. Feliciano, however, was not given time to react, for Adriel had tackled him in a tight hug before he could do anything and smothered him in tears and thank-yous.

Eventually, she pulled herself together a bit and sat down in the chair next to him. All they did was smile at each other a long time, making it extremely awkward for Ludwig (but, unsurprisingly of course, not Alfred). She grabbed Feliciano's hands and muttered, "They wanted to kill me…"

Their fingers were interlocked when Feliciano noticed something wrong about her left hand. He took it in his own and examined the bandages that had been wrapped around a stub where her pinky should have been. "Did they..?" he asked, bracing for the answer.

"Yeah…" Adriel figured he deserved to know why. "After… they caught us kissing under that bridge… It was punishment for 'breaking the rules' or something."

He didn't say anything for a long time, just stared at her missing finger. Finally, he whispered just audible enough to make out the words, "If I'd have known, I wouldn't have let you go."

"I'm sorry. I was sworn to secrecy, and I didn't want them hunting me down in an unfamiliar city. It wasn't your fault." The words tumbled out of her mouth. She hated seeing Feliciano so full of guilt and regret. "Besides, you helped me get rescued later."

Alfred cut in, "Yeah, but the hero did all the _actual_ _rescuing_."

Adriel rolled her eyes but proceeded to laugh. The others joined in until the atmosphere at the table was much more cheery. After all, her life was much better now. Most of her ex-captives had been locked up, she had found some friends and a temporary but nice home, and had a goal for her future. She had no more to fear and a lot to look forward to, so she laughed with the fullest extent of her heart.

Alfred pointed at Adriel's spilled meal and suggested they all go out to eat something, and Feliciano agree with a vigorous nod of the head. "The food on the plane _sucked_," he explained. Ludwig's stomach growled, signaling his own approval. And so, they left to get breakfast, grateful for the current peace in their lives.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Well there you go. <em>Chaos Takes Hold <em>has come to a close. It was a fun ride of confusion, pain, fear, and freedom that I enjoyed writing and sharing with you. Thanks for keeping up with it, haha. I mean, how long has it been since I last updated? A couple of months? Wow, where did the time go…?

But if you really did enjoy this story, I _have _started a new 2p! Hetalia fic that you can find on my profile. I'd really appreciate it if you read it, and if you already did, then you are seriously awesome.

And there may possibly be another chapter—well, an epilogue—if I can find the time to write it. With school, however, I can't make any promises.

Oh, a bit of trivia before I go. At one point, I had planned to make Alfred the one who gave Adriel amnesia in the first place to get him more involved in the plot, but I never found a good spot to put that little bit in :/

Anyways, I guess this is goodbye for this story. Thanks for reading!


	28. Epilogue: Letting the Chaos Go

Author's Note: Surprise!

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><p>Epilogue: Letting the Chaos Go<p>

The wall on each side of the room used to be a light gray concrete, but mold and grime had since sprouted and spread over the area. There was one gross wall on each side of the cell and one behind. Prison bars stood sturdy and straight in the front. The space of the room was not very big; it would only take you three or four steps to reach the bars if you started from the back of the wall.

A toilet sat on one side in the back, its porcelain matching the wall's grime. A jutting sheet of metal chained to the other side of the back wall tried to disguise itself as a bed with its flat pillow and short blanket, but no one could get a good night's sleep on it. Those things were just there for necessity, after all. No one really cared whether or not the inmate was comfortable.

Two guards stood watch in front of the bars. Their only job was to keep the prisoner captive. They couldn't have him scampering off, now could they? Not if this confinement haults his centuries of ruthless murder. They probably got a good laugh out of watching him squirm. Otherwise, they wouldn't have tied him up in his straightjacket and left him on his knees in the middle of the room.

Down the hall, he could hear one of his dumbest companions throwing a hissy fit. He demanded to be let out before threatening to get his lawyer and then proceeding to cuss the jailers out in Italian. The jailbird of our interest wished he could get his phone and some earbuds so he could listen to his rocking J-Pop music. It would make him feel a lot better about his situation and save his ears from hearing the annoying nonsense spewing out of Luciano's mouth.

He rocked his body back and got off his knees. There was no use sitting around. He had a new pair of guards today, so he might as well see how tough they were. Maybe he got lucky and idiots were assigned to watch him.

His long, blond hair was falling out of its ponytail, and his violet eyes were even more sunken in that usual. His movements were slow as he awkwardly walked up to the bars practically armless. He leaned his shoulder next to the guard on the side with the door. "Hey," he said gruffly. Even his voice sounded tired. "I need to take a piss."

The guard merely glanced at him. "You should probably take care of that, then," he snapped.

"Um, I would but." He gestured with his head to the straightjacket. "I'm kind of restricted at the moment."

"Oh in that case." The guard turned around, but instead of opening the door and helping the inmate out, he flipped him the bird. "I still don't give a shit."

Damn. These guys were harsh. How the hell did James let himself end up here? Oh yeah, because he trusted that dumbass Luciano and his delusions of becoming first-players. James should have known Luciano was nothing but needless trouble. Why did he ever believe he could trust that spaghetti-slurper in the first place?

He sat down on his bed. It was not comfortable in the slightest, but he had slept on worse before. He remembered the days of old when he single-handedly induced more fear and worry throughout Canada than anyone else ever did. His only goal was to remind his other color that he would always be there to make his happy-go-lucky attitude squirm.

Honestly, it was about time he was caught. Deep down, he knew he couldn't avoid the law forever. But he never _wanted _to face justice.

He hadn't realized that he had started to doze off until he heard a jailer shout his name like it was some gross, evil disease. "James Williams! You have a visitor." A section of the bars slid open, and the two guards roughly grabbed his upper arms and dragged him out of his cell.

James was stunned. Who would want to talk to him? He could only hope it was a mysterious benefactor come to bail him out. But everyone he had connections with was in Canada, and Kuro wouldn't be stupid enough to show his wanted face at a prison…

The answer hit him suddenly as he was yanked through the prison. Could _she _want to see him? Of all people, did _she _really have the nerve to come here and see him again? _She really is stupid._

Nevertheless, James was dragged away by the jailers to go see that stupid girl.

* * *

><p>Adriel was unsatisfied. Sure, she was finally safe and free, but there was still something unsettled. She had to talk to one of her ex-captors and tell him what was on her mind. And she knew the only one who might actually listen to her was James.<p>

Feliciano and Alfred drove her to the jailhouse, albeit hesitantly. They didn't know if going would really be good for her like she claimed, but she convinced them. Now, they stood awkwardly in the distance, safely watching her without getting too much involved.

Adriel sat down on one side of the glass, her own face staring back at her semi-transparently. She wondered how her least-crazy ex-captor would react to seeing her again after so long. Probably not very well. They had a hell of a falling out that ended with him in jail, after all.

Her heartbeat quickened and her palms grew moist when a couple of guards shoved James into the chair on the other side of the booth. It was the first time they had seen each other in months, and a lot had happened since then.

James still had a straightjacket on; he was a highly dangerous prisoner after all. One of the nearby officers had to unhook the phone for him and rest it in his ear so he could talk. Adriel noticed how tired and pissed off he was—so, at least he was pretty normal. Meanwhile, James was taken aback by how _clean _Adriel was.

For the majority of the time he knew her, she was rather filthy. Sure, she had taken showers from time to time, but not with whatever expensive products she was using now that was lived with those first-players. Her brown hair was pulled back in a half-up, half-down do, not a trace of dried blood or dirt to be found. And her skin, a healthy color instead of the deathly pale he was accustomed to, was cleared of bruises, though it was marked with scattered scars. Her brown eyes weren't swollen and black, and they watched him with a mix of fear, hesitance, and shock.

She undoubtedly wore her purple turtleneck to hide as many scars as she could. It wasn't cold outside; in fact, it was the middle of summer, the hottest time of the year. But he figured he shouldn't bring that up, so he settled instead on saying, "You're looking nice."

What she said next caught him off guard. "And you look… helpless."

His eyes widened. She was right. What with his lack of sleep and nourishment combined with his less-than-ideal restraints, he really _was _helpless. Oh, how the tables have turned. "Yeah, fuck you, too," he muttered half-heartedly.

This reunion of sorts was more awkward than either of them had imagined. James refused to make eye contact, and all the words Adriel had planned to say evaporated the moment she saw him. But she had to say _something_. So she coughed to clear the silence before proceeding. "You know you deserve this."

"Yeah, yeah," he replied. "I'm a bad person who killed innocent people, and the only place scum like me belongs is either behind bars or dead. Blah, blah, blah…"

"Well…" She didn't know how to respond. "Yeah."

James glanced at Feliciano and Alfred cowering in the farthest corner from them. Adriel followed his gaze, a vague smiling tugging at her face. "You seem… happy… with those losers," he noticed.

She shrugged. "Compared to the time when I was with you, yeah, I'm about to burst with joy."

"Hey, none of that shit was my fault," he declared.

She glared at him. "Maybe not directly, but you let it all happen. You told me you wished you could get me out of that hellhole, yet you did _nothing _for me but play with my emotions!"

James wouldn't meet her eyes. "I wasn't trying too…" he said to the floor.

"Yeah, likely story." Her voice was filled with venom.

"I'm serious! I…" He was losing his cool here. She was crumbling his aloof persona. He blamed it on the months of confinement in prison. It didn't make him tougher like one might imagine—it only made him softer. _Hadn't Adriel done that enough?_

His eyes finally met hers, and she saw something in his face that she never would have thought he was capable of. A sickly sadness loomed over his features, and he looked like he might vomit any moment.

"After…" He swallowed, trying to pull himself together. "After Luciano caught us… I said some pretty mean things about you to save my own hide, and because of that, he swore he'd kill you." He shook his head. "It was all my fucking fault and I couldn't even work up the courage to fucking apologize to you. I wish things were different between us."

"I…" Adriel was surely surprised by the weakened man. James was nowhere near the person he used to be, the person she knew. She almost felt sorry for him. "Were you the one who would open the door and never come down?"

If his hands weren't strapped behind his back, his face would surely be buried in them. "I was so sorry for you—but I was never sorry before. I wasn't designed for shitty sympathy. But look at what you did to me. Poor, helpless Adriel Short brought the great, malicious James Williams to his goddamn knees."

That did it. Any reason she felt sorry for him evaporated as soon as those words left his mouth. "I didn't _do_ anything to you. You and your buddies were the ones who kidnapped me in the first place! You deserve to rot here, asshole. Maybe you did feel sorry for me, but I'm tired of the bullshit you've put me through."

James was defeated. He just wanted some forgiveness from her, some cooperation. But she clearly did not come here to forgive him or hear him out. She came to settle the score.

"I… I _am _sorry, you know…" He said it very quietly. It was a feeble attempt at an apology, but it was one nonetheless. The entire world around them seemed to fall silent.

"Sorry doesn't change anything, James." She stood up, blood boiling.

When she was stuck with them, all she wanted was a bit of sympathy. All she wanted was something to let her know she was more than an incompetent nothing. But even when she thought she found that within James, it was all just lies. She craved the company of someone at least semi-sane, someone kind to her like Feliciano was. She wanted it so badly that she lied to herself to make her believe James was the company she wanted. But after living with Alfred and seeing Feliciano again, she knew what real, good company was.

She would never let him—or _any_ of her ex-captors—ever hold a place in her life ever again.

"But—" he started to object.

"It's too late, James," she interjected. "Enjoy your immortal life in prison. Goodbye." She slammed the phone against the receiver and nodded at the nearby guard, letting him know her discussion was over. He lifted the prisoner out of his chair and dragged him away.

With a badass flip of her hair, Adriel turned on her heel and walked away from her past. She approached her friends who had been passing the time idly chatting in the corner of the room. When Feliciano caught sight of her, he smiled brightly. He rushed up to her and gave her a tight hug. "You're so brave and cool, Adriel," he admired.

She hugged him back, smiling just as big and already letting go of her final conversation with her ex-captor. "I was just doing what needed to be done," she said.

"'Course, you knew that if that second-player got too rowdy, the hero would have to step in, so you could be a little more assertive and daring than usual!" Alfred boasted, striking a heroic pose.

"You're right," Adriel laughed. They left the detainment building and clambered into Alfred's pickup truck, Adriel riding shotgun and Feliciano in the back. "Hey guys," she said once they hit the road. "Let's go out for lunch. My treat."

"Sounds good!" Alfred agreed. "I could really go for some Mickey D's!"

The sound that erupted from Feliciano's mouth could only be described as utter disgust. "But that place sucks!" he spat.

"Yeah, I refuse to pay for McDonald's," Adriel deadpanned. "We're going to Chick-fil-a and that's the end of that argument." They all laughed, and she appreciated their kindness for all it was worth.

Nothing could beat the new love, safety, and comfort she had found in her friends. She knew with them around, she'd never fall back into the dark despair that had consumed her when she was kidnapped. Not a single soul had worried about where she went back then, and she had no one who would go looking for her. Her roommate from so long ago didn't even file a missing person report.

But her situation has changed drastically since then. Chaos had taken hold of Adriel's life, but she has since been able to shake it off.

**THE END**

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Seriously, thank you so much for finishing this story. You rock. You don't even know how much it means to me to see that you put up with reading twenty-eight chapters of this little idea I had. I've never written an ending to a story like this before, so it was definitely a new experience.<p>

It's been a long time since I declared this story over, but I couldn't let it stand with how it was before. I hope this is a more satisfying ending, and I bid you farewell, for real this time :P


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